This recipe is for the absolute chocoholics amongst us. Currently we are in between our summer and winter season in Austria. We don’t have any guests here in MoaAlm Mountain Retreat to cook for but we still treat each other with cakes and desserts. Yes, its a good life for some!
This brownie recipe is an absolute winner. We don’t know about you, recently we have become obsessed with brownies. Crispy outside, gooey inside, that’s our aim in all our brownie experiments. When we found this recipe we knew it would work exactly how we wanted it to. Nobody would even recognise that it’s also vegan!
We also discovered that the brownie once cooked must go into the freezer. It become so much easier to cut and it tastes much better. Just don’t forget to take it out after an hour, otherwise you’ll be eating brownie ice-cream!
Caramelised pears and roasted crispy hazelnuts just add another level to this recipe, but if you don’t have them at home, just skip them. We also included a quick caramel sauce, to add even more indulgence to an already gooey treat.
We hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.
•1 big Pear
•5tbsp Brown Sugar
•1tsp Non-Dairy butter
•3tbsp water
•5tbsp Non-Dairy butter
•200 g Dairy-Free Dark Chocolate
•1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
•1/4 tsp baking soda
•1 1/3 cups Brown Sugar
•3 ½tbsp Cocoa Powder
•Pinch of Salt
•Pinch of Cinnamon
•1 cup Dairy Free Milk
•Handful hazelnuts, roughly chopped
First to caramelise the pear, slice it into equal small cubes. Pour the brown sugar, water and butter and melt it all together on low heat. Once it starts to bubble, add the pear and continue cooking for another 10minutes or so. You want to reach the soft texture of the pear and all the liquid turns into syrup like consistency. Once ready, set it aside.
Now prepare the brownie dough. Mix all the dry ingredients together, apart from hazelnuts. Melt the chocolate with butter in a glass bowl over the steaming pot. We use the caramelised pear pot steam to save a little extra washing up!
Then slowly incorporate melted chocolate with your dry ingredients. Add non-dairy milk and mix it all together.
Preheat your oven to 180 C degrees. Pour your brownie mix into square cooking tin with baking paper, level it all and pour caramelised pears on top together with hazelnuts.
Cook it for 20-22 minutes, then put it aside and let it cool for 15-20 minutes. We then transferred it to the freezer for an hour before cutting it into the desired shapes and voila!
We like putting the brownie into the freezer so you still get the gooey consistency inside but it’s much easier to cut it. Also, something really magical happens when you keep chocolate in the fridge. We swear that brownies are always much better the next day after keeping them in the fridge, but we struggle to prove that theory often as we never seem to keep them that long!
Enjoy and please remember to tag #relaxinglyactive to your picture when you share this recipe on social media. If you feel that eating such a sweet treat should be combined with a day of yoga and walking in the mountains, then check out our summer hike and yoga or our winter snowshoe and yoga holiday, high in the Austrian Alps.