Deals From MS Do

Not long after I began cooking gluten-free, I was walking through my local $1 Shop and a book literally fell of the shop and hit me.  There was NO ONE else in the store and I said that God was throwing this book at me, because it literally became a Godsend as I was so lost in all things gluten-free.  I began reading about many strange sounding flours, gums, and guars that I had no idea existed before God threw The Gluten-Free Gourmet at me.  The author did a fabulous job of explaining all of these strange sounding things and I quickly overcame my fears of these new foreign sounding things.

One day I finally got hungry enough that I decided I HAD to have something sweet and chocolately.  Imagine my surprise when I found a brownie recipe that called for BEAN FLOUR!  At that time, I didn't have the GF Mix recipe that I have now, so I used the bean flour.  I was amazed at how good the brownies were, with absolutely NO BEAN TASTE, whosoever!  Ever since then, I have used the bean flour to make the brownies. The bean flour actually gives you a little more fiber in your diet and they still taste GREAT!  If you're worried about gas from the bean flour, you can add about 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda to the dry ingredients.  The baking soda will help eliminate the gas through a chemical reaction process inside your body. 

I had a pretty finicky bunch of fifth graders that loved these brownies when I was still teaching, so I hope that you will, too! Give them a try and let me know what you think about them!

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup Garbzano Bean Flour or GF Mix* (see below)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 squares unsweetened chocolate ** (see below)
• *1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon Egg Replacer
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum*** (see below)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) melted or margarine

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8"x8" square cake pan.
2. In a measuring cup, whisk the GF mix, xantham gum, and Egg Replacer. Set Aside.
3. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and chocolate. Remove from heat.  Skip the saucepan if you are using cocoa powder and oil. Stir in sugar. 
4. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla. Stir in flour mixture.
5. Spoon the mixture into the cake pan.  The mixture will be THICK and you'll need to spread it out, as it is too thick to spread out on its own.  Bake for 30 minutes, being careful not to overbake. Since these are a fudge style brownie, using a toothpick to test for doneness will NOT work.  The toothpick will almost ALWAYS come out sticky and covered with fudgey brownie!
6. Cool before cutting.

This is an easy mix to prepare ahead of time and store so that you just need to add your eggs and oil (if needed) when you ae ready to cook.  You could also use powdered egg instead of regular eggs so that you only need to add water.  Vanilla powder was another new product that I found in my studies of all things gluten-free.  It could be used in place of the liquid vanilla.  As the powder is more concentrated than the liquid form, you only need to use 1/2 of the called for vanilla in a recipe. 

* Get the GF Mix "recipe" from Dishing It Up: Corn and Cheddar Waffles Go Great With Soup

** Sub for unsweetened chocolate squares - Post #2 - I have never bought the unsweetened chocolate squares, I always use 1 (1 ounce) square unsweetened chocolate = 3 tablespoons cocoa powder plus 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening.  I also use oil instead of shortening so that I can skip the melting in a saucepan in step #3 above. 

** Xanthan Gum replaces the gluten (that adds stickiness and sponginess to dough) found in wheat flours and can be found in health food stores.

There is no mistake in the recipe.  It does call for egg replacer AND eggs.  It seems like the egg replacer helps to make the brownies rise and give them a fluffier texture, while the eggs provide the moisture needed to bind the ingredients together.

Check out the other "Dishing It Up" Chocolate Deserts recipes: