SRC: Couscous & Consciousness’ Double Chocolate Raspberry Brownies

For April’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Sue from Couscous & Consciousness. Sue is a Kiwi who loves yoga, food and conscious eating. When I first opened her blog, I was greeted with load of beautiful photos of beautiful food. Yum! Foods like her Roasted Cauliflower and Almond Salad and her Fried Zucchini, Pea and Quinoa Salad , Asparagus, Artichokes, Argulua, Pomegranate and Beet Salad, and Apricot, White Chocolate and Cashew Nut Slice. (Apparently I was mostly on a salad kick when I was looking initially.)

I ended up choosing her Double Chocolate Raspberry Brownies at Mr Bean’s Request as he needed to bring a “not-cake” to the birthday celebration at his work. Brownies have never really been my “thing” and I’ve made them maybe once before – I guess it’s not that surprising given that we weren’t a “chocolate” family, but I was surprised at how easy they were! You essentially mix things together in two separate bowls, mix the bowls together, add the mix-ins, pour it into the pan and into the oven it goes.

I made a few adjustments – I reduced the sugar to 1 lightly packed cup, made it gluten free and used chocolate chips instead of chopped chocolate as that’s what the store had (Although, I would recommend that you use chopping white chocolate as the majority of the chips melted.) You can also easily make this recipe dairy and soy free by using a dairy free/soy free chocolate for both the white and dark chocolate.

I also made the brownies in a 8 x 8″ pan as I don’t own a 8 x 12″ one, which meant that it was more of a brownie cake than brownie squares and the cooking time was much longer as a result. I think even a 9 x 13″ pan would work and the cooking time would be much shorter as a result.

These brownies are moist, not super dense and very chocolate-y. I’m sure Mr. Bean’s coworkers will love them and not be able to tell they are gluten free!

Gluten Free Double Chocolate Raspberry Brownies

280 g butter (I used Earth Balance Soy-Free Buttery Spread)
250 g dark chocolate chips (The original recipe called for 200g chopped dark chocolate, but the store was out)1/3 c. each of brown rice, sorghum and tapioca flour
1/2 tsp. xathan gum
1 c. packed sugar
6 eggs
1 c. frozen raspberries
250 g white chocolate chips (Original recipe called for 200 g chopped white chocolate)

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line an 8 x 8″ pan with parchment paper.
2. Melt butter over medium heat. Once it’s melted, remove from heat and stir in dark chocolate until it’s all melted. Set aside to cool.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, xathan gum and sugar. Add eggs and use the whisk to beat them slightly before using a spoon to mix it until smooth.
4. Pour in the chocolate mixture and mix well. Fold in the raspberries and white chocolate.
5. Pour batter into pan and bake in the oven for 60+ minutes (Start checking at around 45 min for doneness and rotate pan about half way through) or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
6. Remove from oven and cool in tin. Cut into squares.
7. Enjoy!

Sue, it was wonderful looking through your beautiful blog and I hope to try more of your recipes in the future!

Please Check out the rest of Group D’s Recipes Below:

Gluten Free Vegan Valentine Cupcakes

Happy Early Valentine’s Day! In honour of the day of pink, hearts and all things kitsch, I decided to make cupcakes. Pink Cupcakes. Well, they couldn’t be any other colour, could they?

Being me, I wanted them to be healthier(ish), but still tasty. They are based off Cybele Pascal’s Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from The Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook (great book & resource!), but I reduced the sugar and added raspberry purée as a swirl to take away some of the sweetness. Many raspberry swirl cupcakes get you to add sugar to the raspberries, but I don’t think that’s necessary.

These cupcakes work well with or without frosting – just make sure that you don’t add tons of it if you’re trying to reduce your sugar intake! (Don’t take a page from Crave Cupcakes. Seriously. No mountain-high icing swirls for me!)

I brought them to work and my coworkers loved them (“this is gluten free? Everything I’ve ever tried that was gluten free was gross, but this is really good!”) – little did they know that they were also vegan!

I asked one of my coworkers how they compared in taste and texture to gluten ones and she said they were fairly similar and that mine were considerably less sweet, which was a good thing. I take that as praise for gluten free vegan baking!

Gluten Free Vegan Raspberry Swirl Cupcakes

1/2 c. Sorghum flour
3/4 c. Brown rice flour
1/2 c. Tapioca starch
1/4 c. Potato starch
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Baking soda
1 c. Almond milk
1 tsp. Apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. Vegan shortening (I used earth balance, which is unfortunately not soy free, but I needed to use it up)
3/4 c. Sugar (could probably use even less as I found them to be quite sweet)
1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 Tbsp. Powdered egg replacer, whisked with 1/4 c. water
1 c. Frozen raspberries, thawed and mashed (you could purée them in a blender, but why make extra dishes when you don’t have to?)

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper cups (I made 20 mini cupcakes and 7 larger ones, but I think you could easily do 24 mini cupcakes and six bigger ones. This should make about 12 standard sized cupcakes.)
2. Whisk together dry ingredients. Set aside.
3. Measure out your almond milk and add the vinegar. Stir and set aside.
4. In the bowl of a mixer, beat together the shortening, sugar, egg replacer and vanilla until fluffy, about 2 min.
5. Add flour mixture in three parts and almond milk in two parts alternatively, starting and ending with the flour. Beat until smooth.
6. Scoop a but of batter into each muffin tin (about 1/3 full). Add about a scant tsp of raspberries to the mini cupcakes and a scant Tbsp to the large cupcakes.
7. Cover with batter until tins are 3/4 full. Using a toothpick, swirl the raspberries around the cupcake.
8. Bake in oven for ~14 min for the minis and ~20 min for the larger cupcakes it until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
   Immediately remove from tin onto a cooling rack.
9. Frost once cool, if desired.

Raspberry Frosting

1/2 c. vegan margarine
2+ c. icing sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 – 3 tbsp raspberry purée (left over from cupcakes)

1. Beat the margarine until fluffy.
2. Add icing sugar, vanilla and raspberry purée.
3. Beat until smooth. Add more icing sugar or purée to get the desired consistency.
4. Pipe onto cupcakes with a star tip.
5. Add heart sprinkles if desired.
6. Enjoy!

*I found this amount of frosting to be perfect as I managed to ice all of the cupcakes. As you can see, I tried not to add a ton of frosting, so if you want more on your cupcakes, you’ll need to make more frosting.

What are your plans for Valentine’s Day?

Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Vegan Raspberry Bars

After coming home from a birthday party late on Saturday night, I turned to Mr. Bean and told him that I wanted to bake something. Always practical, he convinced me to wait until Sunday as baking at midnight when you’re supposed to be at church the next morning is perhaps not the best idea. So, I started scheming. I knew that I wanted to make some kind of dessert bar (especially given that this month’s challenge at the Gluten-Free Homemaker is to make a dessert bar) but I also didn’t feel like going to the grocery store to get new ingredients, so it had to be made from ingredients in my pantry. I perused many of my cookbooks for a recipe to work off of, but it was this apple bar recipe by Ginger Lemon Girl that really inspired me – simple, vegan, chocolate* and refined sugar free and easily adaptable. Awesome.

When I finally got around to baking on Sunday night (while listening to my dad tell me about the ski trip he and my mum went on for an hour), I just started putting ingredients together. Similar to how Deanna from The Mommy Bowl bakes cookies with her son, I picked my ingredients based on what I wanted the result to be. I wanted a high protein and fibre bar without eggs and the least amount of sweetener as possible, but still sweet enough to be considered a “dessert” bar.  I chose an almond/coconut/brown rice/tapioca flour blend and used quinoa flakes as well as oats. For the filling, I chose thawed frozen raspberries as that was what was in my freezer and spices that I thought would go well together.  So, I threw these all together (figuratively speaking – I do a good enough job of making my kitchen a disaster area as is) and hoped that it would work out – luckily for me, it did! This bar is just sweet enough – feel free to add more sweetener to taste if that’s what you fancy – and the combination of flours, berries and spices gives it a pleasantly complex flavour.

Gluten Free Vegan Raspberry Squares.

1/2 c. almond flour
1/2 c. brown rice flour
1/4 c. tapioca starch
1/4 c. coconut flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 c. gluten free oats
1/2 c. quinoa flakes
3 tbsp. palm sugar
1/2 – 2/3 c. coconut oil
3 c. thawed raspberries, with as much of the liquid drained as you can.
3 – 4 tbsp. honey or agave nectar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cardamom
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Whisk together flours, baking powder and salt. Add oats, quinoa flakes and palm sugar and mix until evenly distributed.
3. Add in unmelted coconut oil. Using your fingers, work the coconut oil into the flour mixture until there are no lumps remaining and the mixture is crumbly.
4. In a separate bowl, stir together raspberries, honey and spices. Add more sweetener to reach desired sweetness.
5. Press over half of the crumb mixture into a greased 8″ square pan. Scoop the raspberries onto the pressed bar mixture and distribute evenly. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture on top of the raspberries and pat lightly.
6. Bake in heated oven for 30 – 40 minutes or until topping is light brown.
7. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

What is your favourite kind of dessert bar?

*I wanted a chocolate free bar as I’m not sure whether I should eat it as I react negatively to caffeine and potentially cocoa. It makes me a bit sad, but anything to make my body feel good and function properly is worth it in the end. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. ;)

Recipe submitted to: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Hearth and Soul Hop 43 and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

Happy First Birthday Cake!

My parent’s pastor’s daughter had a celebration for her first birthday on Saturday and I was asked to make a cake. Of course I agreed (when can I pass up the opportunity to make cake?!?) and since I was on pseudo crunch time thanks to lots of work for school,  I chose to do something simple.

It’s a far cry from my “Happy Birthday Jesus” cake in terms of complexity, but I still think it’s pretty.

The bow was made of fondant and the rest is raspberry butter cream frosting. I used a “Hot Pink Raspberry Cake” Recipe – I just made GF substitutions for the flour and added an extra egg. The cake itself was pretty moist and a bit spongy thanks to the gelatin in the jello powder. But it was still quite tasty!

Here’s the birthday girl and her mommy – how’s this for a mother/daughter moment?

Have you ever been asked to make a birthday cake for a non family member? How did it turn out?

P.S. It’s a good idea to not let your husband “dress you up” at children’s birthday parties or else you’ll end up looking like this:

Please learn from my mistake and don’t post embarrassing photos of yourself on your blog because of it.