"Store Bought" Chocolate Brownies

This recipe claims to be so versatile it can make cake, cupcakes, brownies - whatever! A friend gave it to me to try.

Gluten free, wheat free, dairy free, soya free, nut free with safe ingredients, corn free and in theory could be egg free, but that's a LOT of eggs to replace.

Ingredients

• 2 cups (250g) rice flour
• 2/3 cup water of safe "milk" (I used rice milk)
• 2 cups (400g) sugar
• 1 cup margarine or oil (I used sunflower oil, olive oil is too heavy for baking)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups (350g) safe chocolate chips
• 6 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

Method

• In a saucepan over a medium heat, stir together the butter or oil, milk/water and sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly.
• Remove from heat and stir through the chocolate chips until smooth
• Stir in the flour, working quickly stir in the eggs, or the egg replacer mixture. (I used a large beating whisk for this)
• Pour into a lined cake pan or cupcake cases.
• Cupcakes bake for 10 minutes, brownie pans for 15 mins and if split into two cake pans 16 mins together.
• Allow to cool completely then remove for/baking parchment.
• Add frosting if desired.

Free-From Chocolate Brownie Cake

Having held you all in suspense on our Facebook page since announcing an EGG FREE cake recipe was on the way...... here it is!!

I can't take much credit for this though, it really is a creation of my daughter's, who at 9 was rather cheesed off that she wasn't able to eat the gluten free brownies her older brother enjoys frequently and decided to do something about it!

We are really lucky and are allowed some egg here, which makes life much easier. But many are not able to eat egg so we are officially making an effort to include more egg free recipes.

I had read about eggless "crazy" cakes before, and we had a basic recipe for guidance. The were created during the "Great Depression" in 1930s America, when eggs and butter were hard to find and expensive.

Ingredients

(Adapted from an official "crazy cake recipe")

Dry ingredients

• 1 1/2 Cups of flour (we used Juvela Harvest White but any blended flour would do)
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder (We used Bournville for that brownie taste)
• 1 cup sugar (we used caster, the recipe said granulated but that tasted gritty)
• 1 tsp baking powder

Wet ingredients

• 1 tsp white vinegar (I only had wine vinegar as it's gluten free)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 5 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup water

Method

This is really *so* easy, I was not involved at all, my 9 year old made this by herself.)

• Grease an 8" deep sandwich or square tin
• Measure out the dry ingredients in order
• Mix lightly and make three wells in them 
• Put the wet ingredients one in each well, the oil in the largest - like a face!  (2)
• Pour the water over the entire lot in the tin (3)
• Mix well! (4)
• Bake at 170C / 350F for 35 minutes, the middle should be slightly squidgey to avoid the outside getting too dry (that was the problem with our first effort) and once cooled it can be decorated if desired. 

When warm, it tastes just like chocolate brownies..... yum!!

Cakes!

This is a general post about cakes, the birthday cake post I wrote some time ago is still valid, in so much as it works well, and the cake is still available. Tesco's chocolate version is even more yummy though!

It comes ready iced too, always a bonus! All our family love this moist, chocolatey cake.

There are lots of options now, it is definitely getting easier to find cake alternatives or ingredient alternatives. My children love decorating their own cakes and biscuits with icing pens too.


If you prefer a dry mix, I have tried two recently. The Hale and Hearty mix on the right (which is good but I prefer their brownie mix for taste)
and the Glebe Farm Mix which is fool proof, works every time and I would love to know why it is so much better than my own efforts when the ingredients are pretty much the same!

My friend Suzanne at "Free From for Kids" has a reliable stock of the Hale and Hearty mix, sometimes found in Sainsbury's and the Glebe Farm one is increasingly available at local outlets like farm shops etc. They make a blueberry muffin mix, carrot cake mix and pizza base mix which I have recently bought to try. Muffins were very successful!

Of course, you can use a regular sponge cake recipe (4oz/100g of flour, same of marge, same of caster sugar with 2 eggs) and substitute everything for free from ingredients which I do very successfully pretty frequently. Works fine with muffins and if you can tolerate banana they help with the rising for beautifully tall cupcakes and muffins.

There are lots of variations on this theme on the "Sweet Treats" page. There is a fantastic chart for alternatives to egg in cakes here too.

Happy Baking!