Recipe Test: Vegan Chocolate-Peanut Brownies (The Healthy Hunter)

 Some weeks just demand dessert. And now that it's cool enough for me to feel okay using the oven, that also means baked things. As frustrating as much of life can be, that little joy helps!

So bring in the vegan chocolate-peanut brownies from the Healthy Hunter blog. They were a managable-sized recipe for me to make, eat a third over a few days, freeze a third, and give a third away, and they used exactly the amount of aquafaba I had on hand.

These brownies turned out very fudgy and tender, like a flourless chocolate cake, more than the cakey brownies I usually make. They do have a bit of spelt flour in them, but they also have a lot more chocolate and peanut butter than flour. This was sort of a health food brownie, given the ingredient list (aquafaba, peanut butter, spelt flour, coconut sugar, cocoa powder, etc.), but they tasted plenty decadent and had a hefty enough protein content for me to feel comfortable having some for breakfast. (Um...it was that kind of week.)

I did bake these longer than the recipe asked, and although they set, they were, as I said, more like a flourless chocolate cake than anything. They peanut flavor wasn't pronounced, but the smell of peanut butter was strong. When I ate them, I found I picked off the peanut topping and ate it first, because I didn't think the crunch of the nuts really went with the soft, fudgy brownie part. I might leave off the peanuts for myself next time, though I think they could be an important signal to people with peanut allergies to steer clear.