Chocolate and Blueberries

I had to have a little taste.

I love to bake, but I have to admit I hate having baked goods in my house. You know that trigger that exists in your head, the one that says “Stop Eating”? Baked goods turn mine off for some reason. I’m not the only one. Whenever my mom would make a Company Cake, the minute Company exited our front door, my mom would throw what remained of the Company Cake into the trash can. I’m not as strong as my mom. I have to flush remaining Company Cake down the toilet.

These brownies were not really supposed to serve as Company Cake. I was supposed to deliver them to a friend yesterday as a “For the love of all that is good and fudgy, please help me move, bribe” for a friend, but not ten minutes after I pulled these out of the oven, my friend was called into service elsewhere. I am very proud of myself, though. I only managed to scarf down half a pan between last night and this morning before realizing I should put what remains in the freezer. I don’t know why, but for some reason, freezing things has the same effect in my household as flushing things down the toilet (except that my freezer actually works properly). All baked goods that go into the freezer stay in the freezer. You’d think that I’d lose control and start shoveling frozen goods into my mouth, too, but it just doesn’t happen.

All bets might be off, though. These are the Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies from Veganomicon (made gluten-free, of course). Chocolate and blueberries are foods so good, they have been known to make me cry. And these particular brownies are so fudgy, so wudgy that tears of joy welled up in my eyes. OK. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but they’re very good. Since they’re chocolate, I actually upped the amount of besan I used since I had no sorghum flour on hand and wanted to make sure the texture came out as beautifully as the flavor. I was not disappointed, but I think next time I make these I’ll be adding even more blueberries because I really do love blueberries and frozen (not recipe recommended, but all I could find) don’t always pack the same punch as fresh.

Susie is not such a big fan of chickpea flour in bread, but she is awesome. Back when she first started mentioning her quest for a better vegan egg replacer, I got kind of excited. It always did seem to me that, at least in the case of savory bread making, yeasted rolls, bagels, etc., that it might be better to veganize omni/vegetarian recipes than it would be to make vegan recipes gluten-free. Not only did she agree, but she’s interested, which will be helpful since, unlike me, she has real baking training. She’s also a much more careful food scientist than I am. I doubt that she would let her injera experiment get all moldy like I did.