Gluten-Free Brownies

I've been playing around quite a bit with a brownie recipe that I found online recently, as I pointed out in our last post about brownies.  The recipe is credited to Katherine Hepburn, who is perhaps one of the most prolific movie stars of all time.  Well, was one of the most prolific movie stars of all time.  She passed away about ten years ago at the impressive age of 96.  She won four academy awards for best actress (a record that is still unbroken), and probably led the way for the 'modern woman' by way of being a strong and independent individual who dominated the public spotlight without conforming to the Hollywood standard for how a lady should act while simultaneously retaining her femininity.  Surely you must have heard of her, and even more likely you've seen her in one of her many roles.  So, what does this all have to do with brownies?

Absolutely nothing.  I liked the framework of the recipe because it uses simple, whole ingredients for the most part.  Real chocolate, butter, eggs, and not much else aside from sweetener.  The sweetener doesn't have to be processed sugar, as I established in my Jaggery Brownie experiments, and even the flour isn't a necessary component of the recipe.  You'll need some sort of flour-like substance, but given how little of the body of these brownies depend on the actual flour (1/4 cup for the whole recipe), the door is really opened for trying substitutions.

The substitutions that I made use of this time were of a granulated unrefined sugar (sucanat) for the prescribed sugar, and coconut "flour" and cocoa powder to replace the wheat flour.  This would also make the brownies free from gluten, which isn't an enormous concern of mine but is a very trendy food component to avoid these days as well as being an actual dietary concern for a small portion of the population.  More appealing to myself is the reduction or elimination of processed flour from our food.  I've been doing most of my roux with fresh spelt flour, which has a nice body and good flavor for that, but I didn't want any of that flavor to come out in these brownies.  I do use the term "coconut flour" rather loosely, as aside from being a fairly dry powder it does not perform admirably in any other format that I have tried it in thus far (thickening sauces, creating a roux, etc..)  I had heard that it was pretty decent for baking some quickbreads that don't need much body, so it seemed like a good choice here. 

So, gather up your ingredients.  The sucanat was a first for me.  It's not crystallized, but rather coarsely ground:

Much drier than jaggery, but still with a strong flavor of molasses.

 

 The chocolate was still some leftovers from my stash of unsweetened amazing chocolate brick, and the butter is grass fed from pastured cows milked during the summer months.

If I had a personal logo, this might be it.

The eggs, as always, are also pasture raised.  Let's just take a quick look at these gorgeous eggs.

Approaching the boundaries of food porn...I love it.

OK, enough with the somewhat unnecessary and almost completely gratuitous photos of my favorite ingredients.  Start off like before, by melting the chocolate with the butter (actual recipe is at the bottom of the page) and stirring the eggs, sucanat, and vanilla together.

Ingredient megaphoto...because I wasted all of that space earlier on egg pictures.

Also, be sure to preheat the oven and butter/flour your baking dish.  Ah, but these are gluten/flour free, so we don't want to actually flour the dish.  Coconut flour, right?  Heck no - I don't want the outside of these brownies to be covered in a chalky coating of dried out powdered coconut.  A much better idea is to dust the pan with some cocoa.

It's brilliant, really...more chocolate!

  Now, melt combine all of the ingredients (melted chocolate and butter, eggs/sucunat/vanilla, and coconut flour with a bit of sea salt) into a smooth velvety batter.  Again, use a small amount of the warm chocolate mixture to temper the eggs before combing completely to prevent a chocolate egg scramble.  (One of these days I'm just going to have to make chocolate scrambled eggs to see if they're even better than the brownies, and whether or not it pays to avoid making them at all.)

It's not completely melted yet if there's a chocolate island in your pan.

Chocolate island...my mind began to wander.  So, pour it into the prepared baking dish, bake it, and then let cool completely before cutting up the brownies for service.  Service, and lots of brownie photos.

Milk is a natural addition to this party.

Gluten-Free Brownies

• 1 cup Sucanat
• 2 eggs
• 8 ounces of butter
• 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup coconut flour flour
• 1/4 tsp sea salt (fine dry)
• Cocoa powder for dusting

1. Melt chocolate and butter in saucepan that is large enough for all ingredients.  Remove from heat.
2. Combine eggs, jaggery, and vanilla.  Temper and then incorporate into the chocolate and butter pan.  Whisk in the coconut flour and salt.  Stir thoroughly to combine all ingredients.
3. Pour into a buttered and cocoa-ed 8" x 8" baking dish and bake at 325F for 40 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool completely before serving.

Cookie Dough

These aren't really cookie dough...if you bake them, they will not turn into cookies.  However, they taste remarkably similar to actual chocolate chip cookie dough, but are composed of fuit, nuts, and (gasp) some actual chocolate chips. 

This is way more than a serving size

I know that I got the inspiration for a date/nut based snack bar from somewhere on the internet that I cannot remember at this time and I apparently forgot to bookmark it.  However, I tweaked this one a bit, and I'm sure that the place that I first read about it didn't invent it, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. 

Ingredients are as follows:

• 2 cups whole medjool dates, pitted
• 1 cup whole almonds
• 1 cup whole pecans (or crushed if that's what you have; it really doesn't matter in this recipe)
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1/2 cup finely shredded coconut
• 1 tsp real vanilla extract

1. Put the dates, almonds, and pecans into a food processor and process them until they begin to look like a coarse paste.
2. As the mixture starts looking pasty, pour in the coconut oil, coconut, and vanilla extract
3. The contents of your blender should be a paste by this point in time.  Dump out into a bowl and stir in the chocolate chips.  It would be tempting to just throw the chips into the food processor and let your handy dandy kitchen gadget do all of the work.  Don't.  It will pulverize your chocolate chips, and the resultant heat of friction will also melt them and just make a big mess.  Yes, I am speaking to you from experience at this point.
4. Press the mixture into a baking dish lined with a sheet of wax paper.  It doesn't have to be a baking dish, as you won't actually be baking these.  It could be a serving dish, or a platter with high sides, a large tupperware container, a firm hat, or a pair of crocs...so long as you can easily remove the bars from the container once they have cooled down and become firm.  Once that happens, pop the sheet of "dough" out onto a cutting board and cut into portions.  I wrapped them in foil for easy transportation.

I'd sell out my own brother and sisters to a stranger in a sledge for a tray full of these.

Oh, so the chocolate chips that I bought happened to be organic.  Fancy, right?  I almost mentioned that in the ingredients list...like, "your chocolate chips must be organic, or this whole recipe will be a giant bowl of fail".   I don't really have a firm stance on the benefits of organic chocolate chips, as I have not done much research on the topic.  I didn't even buy organic chips to be hip and/or cool.  I bought them because they were available in the bulk bin of my grocery store, whereas I would have otherwise had to buy an entire bag of 'regular' chips.  Since this is not an ingredient that I keep on hand regularly, I opted to just purchase a cup of the fancy chips, which I'm sure I ended up spending as much money on as I would have if I got a whole pound bag of the non-organic.  /rant

-J

Green Smoothies

This is my go-to smoothie. On days where I'm short on time, I'll often throw the ingredients in my magic bullet and take it to-go. It's super customizable, too. You can add or subtract flavors, or substitute similar ingredients. I like to make mine with unsweetened, unflavored kefir. Check out my version below.

Green Smoothie

Ingredients:
1 frozen sliced banana
1 tablespoon all-natural peanut butter (just peanuts and salt)
1-1/2 cup unflavored kefir (adjust to achieve desired consistency)
1 tablespoon honey
a handful of baby spinach

Directions:
Blend all ingredients until smooth.

Makes 1 serving

Adapted from Iowa Girl Eats