Have you ever noticed how most vegan brownie recipes are more like chocolate cake? Without eggs, it can be difficult to get a dense, moist texture that also sets up. But these crackly vegan brownies appear to have found that decadent balance.
Photo credit: Alex Shytsman
Crackly Vegan Brownies made with Melted Dairy-Free Chocolate
This recipe is a sample from the cookbook, Wait, That’s Vegan?! by Lisa Dawn Angerame. Her new collection focuses on plant-based twists of classic and gourmet comfort food, from Salt-Cured Beet Carpaccio to Chickpea Scampi. The recipes cover breakfast, salads, sandwiches, mains, and of course, desserts.
Lisa includes a little story in the introduction of each recipe. Here’s what she wrote about the crackly vegan brownies recipe below.
When I was telling a friend about the dessert chapter of this book, she assumed there was going to be a brownie recipe in it, because everyone needs a good brownie recipe. I told her that I tried everything over the years, without success, using all kinds of egg replacers and other ingredients. The only thing I didn’t try was melting chocolate into the batter. Um, hello? Why not?
So, I went into full recipe development mode and, with a little tinkering and a lot of melted chocolate, I came up with this recipe. These little squares hit every mark: fudgy, chewy and crackly. You need to make these right now.
Lisa also uses aquafaba, which tends to provide better structure than most other egg substitutes in recipes like this one.
Special Diet Notes: Crackly Vegan Brownies
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, nut-free, peanut-free, optionally soy-free, vegan, and vegetarian.
- 1 cup (220 g) packed vegan brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons (45 ml) sunflower oil (can sub another oil)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup (240 g) dairy-free mini semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
- 1⁄4 cup (60 ml) aquafaba, room temperature
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C, or gas mark 4). Line an 8x8–inch (20x20–cm) brownie pan with parchment paper.
- Place the chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water. Mix with a silicone spoonula and melt until smooth. Take the chocolate off the heat and set aside.
- Add the flour, baking powder and salt into a big mixing bowl. Mix together well.
- In a separate medium mixing bowl, whisk the aquafaba until it becomes foamy and white. Add the brown sugar, oil and vanilla. Whisk to combine. Fold in the melted chocolate chips.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix until the batter comes together. It will be thick. Turn the batter out into the brownie pan and press it to the edges; even it out, using a silicone spoonula, a small measuring cup, or a glass.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Let the brownies cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Lift the brownies out by the parchment, place them on a cooling rack and cool completely before cutting into squares.
More Rich Vegan Chocolate Desserts
Chocolate Dairy-Free Ice Cream
The Ultimate Vegan Chocolate Cheesecake
Chocolate Cream Pie
4 Comments
Took 40 minutes for the toothpick to come out clean. They are cooking on the cooling look but the edges are too hard and it still looks soft in the middle.
Once cool, refrigerate the brownies. They will set up. I’m sorry you had difficulty with Lisa Dawn’s recipe. Brownies can be temperamental to heat and to the type of pan you use. A metal pan will often cause the edges to brown more, before the middle has set up. Is it possible your oven was running a little cool? Even 25 degrees can make quite a difference in time.
What if I want to use instead of the aquafaba? How many?
Taylor, I’m not sure what you want to use in place of the aquafaba. If you want to use eggs, I recommend this dairy-free brownie recipe with eggs. Was there something else you wanted to use?