Better living through chocolate

It's been AGES since I put a food post up so, in an attempt to assuage the prevailing mood with chocolate, here's a new brownie recipe.  Mr. Mouse and I are attempting to eat a plant-based diet these days which, to us, means not only no animal products but also no oils.  A lot of vegan recipes add fats via oils so I have adapted a "Chewy Vegan Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie" recipe from www.food.com as follows:

CHEWY VEGAN CHOCOLATE CHIP BROWNIES

¾ cup unsweetened applesauce*

2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp ground flax seed**

½ cup almond milk (or soymilk)

2 cups flour

¾ cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 ½ cups semisweet vegan chocolate chips***

Preheat oven to 350◦F.  Add ground flax seeds to almond milk and stir for about 30 seconds, set aside.  In a large bowl, sift together cocoa, flour, baking soda and salt.  Cream sugar and applesauce in another large bowl.  Add the flax seed/almond milk mixture and mix well.  Stir in vanilla.  Slowly mix in dry ingredients.  Mix in chocolate chips. Pour brownie mixture into lightly greased**** 9x13 baking pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean.

Note:  the original recipe was for cookies but I found the dough too wet to roll into balls and went the brownie route instead.  They came out very moist and fudgy.

* This is a substitution for ¾ cup canola oil.  The applesauce worked GREAT.

**  I found pre-ground flax seed in the health food section of my regular grocery store; you can also find whole flax seeds and grind them yourself.  Flax seed is somehow an egg substitution in vegan baking.

*** I found non-dairy/non-gluten dark chocolate chips in the health food section and just used a whole bag.  They were actually tasty on their own – not like yucky carob.

**** I used just a tiny bit of coconut oil