Chocolate Raspberry Brownies (Vegan)

Ever since a colleague brought some of these in my my workplace a few years ago I've been desperate to try them. The sudden appearance of fresh raspberries in the supermarket in a Northern Hemisphere January made me desperate to create a vegan version. The ensuing guilt for buying a food completely out of season and therefore probably with thousands of food miles on its clock has probably burnt off all the calories they contained.

Chocolate Raspberry Brownies (Vegan)

Ingredients

Oil (to grease the baking dish)

2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

6 tablespoons warm water

1 cup margarine

0.75 cups muscovado sugar

0.75 cups white sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla essence

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

0.5 teaspoons salt

1 cup cocoa powder

1.5 cups plain flour

1 cup dark chocolate chips (or, as I like to call them, "Cut up bits of a block of chocolate from the supermarket")

1.5 cups fresh raspberries

Method

1. Mix the flax seeds and water and set aside.

2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. (Point at which I actually achieved this step when making the recipe: around step 7.)

3. Grease and line a 25 x 25cm baking dish. (Or a dish with approximately the same square centimetrage.) I really recommend lining the dish because I have had terrible experiences in the past where I am VERY excited about eating brownies, only to find that they have adhered to the base of the dish in a way that makes it impossible to remove, except in "snack size", where the snack is being had by a mouse.)

4. Melt the margarine in a large bowl.

5. Mix in the flax-seed-and-water, vanilla essence, baking powder, both sugars and the salt. Whisk until smooth.

6. Mix in the flour and cocoa powder.

7. Mix in the chocolate chips and raspberries. (If you are using a block of chocolate and cutting it up, then pause at this point and cut up the chocolate, because no doubt you will have forgotten to do so if you are anything like me. Also, turn on the oven (see Step 2).

8. Transfer the mixture to the dish. Mush down so that the top is approximately level.

9. Cook at 180 for 23 minutes. (Why this amount of time? Just that mine turned out perfectly. But as long as the top springs back a bit when touched I'm sure it will be fine. It's not like there's raw egg in there waiting to give you salmonella.)

10. Leave to cool in the dish until you can lift it out (maybe ten or so minutes). Once you've got it out, leave it at least half an hour more before diving in. My experience is that brownies really need a chance to settle and congeal to reach the desired level of squidginess sans breakiness.

11. Mmmmmmmmmm.

* In future I have decided that I will give all tin sizes in square centimetres, because who ever has a dish exactly as it is described in a recipe? No matter how many recipes I try in my life, I never seem to have the right tin. This recipe was adapted from a few other recipes and I was sure that I'd measured the ingredients correctly for my dish, but when I actually got everything ready I realised that the dish was about 1/3 too bag. Solution? Fold up the end of the baking paper, lie a glass sideways in the dish, fold paper over glass to create false wall. Worked a charm. Rather harder to describe in words than in practice though, so I have provided you with visual assistance.

Artist's impression of baking tray and glass combination:

If blogging isn't for me, I intend to start a career as an online artist, just so you know.