The Laziest Vegan Chocolate Chip Brownie Recipe Ever • FOOD

Photograph of my final brownies topped with icing sugar

I am a sucker for brownies. The sweet, rich, chocolatey deliciousness gets me every time and they are my number one craving when Mother Nature is paying her monthly visit. But buying brownies is full of processed sugars, lots of unhealthy fats and additives and preservatives that in actuality don't taste as good as fresh gooey, moist homemade ones. But the effort of all the ingredients and buying and making and blah, blah, blah is all to much right? Wrong! Here is my quick and easy 15 minutes to make and 30 minutes to bake recipe, tried and tested and approved.

Okay so there are tonnes of vegan brownie recipes out there, but they all have something in them you don't like the sound of, some expensive and weird ingredient you've never heard of and sound a bit over the top and complicated. I've whipped up a super fast recipe that I have edited from brownie recipes I've tried liked and disliked to make the lazy brownie making recipe here...

Ingredients:

5 Tablespoons of coconut/vegetable/sunflower oil (whatever you prefer - coconut is the healthiest option)
100 g Dairy-free dark chocolate chips
200g Dairy-free dark chocolate / 250g if you don't have dairy free dark chocolate chips
170 g self-raising flour
4 Tablespoons of dairy/milk-free cocoa powder
180 g golden caster sugar (I like to use fair-trade organic & unrefined)
Sea salt
1 Heaped tablespoon of golden syrup
1 Tablespoon of vanilla paste (you can use vanilla essence or a pod if you don't have this)
240 ml Unsweetened almond milk (Organic is best. You can use unsweetened coconut, hazelnut or soy if you prefer)

How To Make:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Grease your chosen baking tin (20cm's roughly if possible) with your chosen oil, then line with greaseproof paper.

2. Place a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the base doesn’t touch the water. Break 200g of the chocolate into the bowl as small as possible and evenly in size as you can (to allow smooth and easy melting) and stir slowly as it melts, then turn off the hob once all the chocolate has melted (safety first!).

3. Sieve the flour and cocoa powder into a large bowl, then stir in the sugar and a pinch of salt (this brings out the flavour of the dark chocolate). Then add your vanilla. If you have a vanilla pod, halve the pod lengthways, scrape out the seeds, then add them to the bowl. Stir in your chosen oil, and milk and then the melted chocolate and start stirring until combined.

4. Now add in your chocolate chips, or chop the 50 remaining grams of dark chocolate if you don't have chocolate chips and a heaped table spoon of golden syrup and stir. Once the mixture is nicely stirred and the extra chocolate is even distributed, pour the mixture into the prepared tin, spreading it out evenly. Then place into the hot oven for 20 minutes, check it and then leave for a another 5-10 minutes, or until cooked on the outside, but still gooey in the middle.

5. Leave to cool for around 5 minutes on a wire cooling rack or heatproof surface if you don't have once, then once it is cooled turn out onto a plate, then serve warm and enjoy! (Add a scoop or two of dairy-free vanilla ice-cream if you're serving this as a dessert for that finishing touch).

And there you have it! Lazy vegan brownies, no fancy ingredients, nothing too unhealthy and definitely delicious!