In Search of a Good Dairy-free Brownie…

As the title suggests I’m in search of a dairy-free chocolate brownie recipe.  This is my second try, the first attempt I used my usual chocolate brownie recipe from Green & Black’s book which is laden with butter, I replaced that with dairy-free margarine and under-baked them as normal.  Texture wise they turned out good, so good in fact the teenagers I was making it for didn’t noticed it was dairy-free.  All they could taste was lots of chocolate, all 300grms of it,  if you throw in plenty of sugar to that mix any teenager will be happy.  But I noticed the difference and so did Bikerboy, there’s something about the flavour of butter in a recipe like brownies which has a satisfying mouth feel in the finish…especially if you like your brownies fudgy and not a cake-like texture.

This recipe for dairy-free was taken from here, I made it to the letter apart from adding the cherries.  The recipe relies on using prune purée instead of butter. Although I’ve come across chocolate and prunes recipes as a low-fat option it was blogger friend Louise from Using Mainly Spoons who pointed out it’s also used as a dairy-free alternative.  The verdict on this recipe is I wouldn’t bother with it for a dairy-free alternative to brownies, I would rather make my usual one with dairy-free margarine.

It’s not disastrous but it’s nothing like a brownie should be so I might as well not faff around with boiling down prunes, whizz them in processor to then realise they’re not quite pureed enough which means having to sieve…this is a pain for me..using pans, processor, sieve, bowls…and to add to the mess I had to use electric whisk to whisk egg whites separately…and…and…it uses 2 egg whites without the yolks.

I hate recipes for cakes that use egg whites only because inevitably I don’t have any in the freezer when I need them.  If I had to use prune purée again I would follow Louise’s advise next time and use prune purée from the baby food selection, easy peasy.

The biggest problem with these was the texture was wrong.  The combination of the prunes & using cocoa powder makes them too chewy, verging on chewy sweets texture.  This wasn’t a complete failure for me because I think the prune purée used sparingly can add a certain richness to a dairy-free brownie.

I think these brownies are definitely missing fat!  I would like to find a combination between using a dairy-free margarine and prunes…the search goes on…

Egg whites whisked separately and folded into mixtures are used to add airiness but here there was no such result, the texture was heavy and dense and very chewy.