RECIPE REVIEW - Vegan Brownies

As well as buying food, eating food and writing about food (partly for fun and partly because my degree requires me to), I also love making food. Specifically baking food, be it cakes, biscuits, puddings, muffins, pies... give me a recipe and a kitchen and I will be happily occupied for hours.
To supplement my blog when my cupboards are looking a little boring and my social life is taking a break (which occurs specifically during January and June exams) I thought I would start reviewing some of the many recipes that I attempt throughout the year. It can always be helpful to see how a recipe has gone for someone else before you head out and spend a small fortune on ingredients!

I'm kicking off my first Recipe Review with a review of these Vegan Cherry and Almond Brownies, taken from the BBC GoodFood website (see here). I didn't make these recently but thought now would be a good time to review them - with Christmas coming up, many people host parties and get-togethers and it's quite common to find that you need to cater for a huge range of different dietary preferences! Not only that, but perhaps you like to make homemade gifts and need something suitable to gift to someone who follows a vegan diet or doesn't eat dairy.

Brownie... or cake?

I followed the recipe and method exactly as listed on the website, with a few small changes. Firstly I used normal margarine, rather than vegan, as I was only making these for my family and therefore there wasn't any real need to purchase a vegan alternative. Secondly I used more than 70g of cherries - I'm not sure how many precisely but I went with my own personal preference. The white chocolate drizzled on top was also my own improvisation!
The recipe itself was simpler than my go-to brownie recipe, which was nice - it just involved the melting of some ingredients and mixing these with the dry. Simple! The most time-consuming process was probably the chopping of the glacé cherries. It cooked well in the recommended 35-45 minutes listed and, in true brownie style, was ready to come out of the oven when a few crumbs were clinging to the knife.

I was really interested in what the texture of these would be like, as the recipe doesn't use eggs. Surprisingly, you couldn't really notice the difference - the flaxseed makes a fairly good replacement. The texture was maybe slightly different to what you would expect in a classic brownie; I found it to be quite crumbly although this lessened the next day. In a way, these brownies were more like very fudgy cake squares (probably due to the ground almonds) - so not exactly like brownies, but nevertheless they were delicious and a definite hit in our household! The glacé cherries are a great addition and stop these from being a little bit boring.

Overall I would certainly recommend these if you are specifically looking for a brownie recipe that is egg-free and dairy-free. Whilst I didn't use vegan margarine, I imagine the result would be pretty much the same as only a small amount is needed. These brownies would be easy enough to customise for Christmas - swapping the cherries for cranberries or adding some nuts would be fairly festive.
That said, I don't think that these can really compare to traditional brownies - whilst they taste lovely and have a good texture, they lack that certain something that brownies have. If you don't need to go egg and dairy-free, then I would stay stick to the classic! It can't be beaten.