Vegan Sweet Potato Chocolate Brownie
Recipe here. Thanks to @dorkandy for recommending this to me!
You only need 200g of sweet potato, but me being an idiot at the shopping mall and also being completely weight and volumetrically challenged, I just grabbed a bunch and turns out I had baked 800g of sweet potato (kumara). The part separated in the bowl was the actual amount I needed.
Vegan recipes are 'weird' if you've never worked with them before. There's a lot of substitution for binding agents and emulsifiers and since I had zero experience, I could've sworn something had gone wrong when I was making this. I was triple checking the steps because of the batter consistency. The recipe warns you that it'll be dry, but I didn't realize how dry. Usually you pour a brownie batter into the pan, but this one was like putty. I could make a ball with it. I had to smoosh it down.
It asks for any type of plant milk, but I felt soy would be a bit too strong, so I used oat milk instead. It also called for oat flour, but I only had plain regular, so that's what went in.
EDIT: I have been told I shouldn't have used regular flour when the recipe called for gluten-free flour. It seems this caused the texture difference for the final product.
I topped it off with Whittaker's 60% dark chocolate. I think I've mentioned this before, but I strongly dislike Whittaker's 60% for eating. There's something about it that just has this weird aftertaste, also it's bitterness is offputting. But the point of baking chocolate is that it intensifies the flavour; your end result gives you something 10% darker (so I ended up with something akin to 70% dark). Also, baking seemed to remove the flavours I disliked in the 60% dark chocolate bar, so now it's my go-to for baking.
If you're a sweet tooth, use a 33% or a 50% chocolate instead.
I know I promised I would stop posting these in-oven photos because everytime I open it, a huge blast of steam comes out and it's super dangerous, but I was going to flip the brownie pan anyway.
Yes, I got blasted by steam. :unyeah:
I brought it to a friend's pizza night and six people got to try it. They were all surprised at the texture; it's also not very sweet, since it's only got a few tablespoons of maple syrup in it. Compared to a regular brownie, I felt that it was chewier and 'drier' (not in a bad way). Since there's no egg or butter, the consistency mostly comes from the sweet potato, and it's bouncy and springy! It's something that would be fun to squish between your fingers if you're the type to play with your food. My personal thoughts--which my friends disagreed on--was that it was less like a brownie and more like a muffin or a denser cake.
By the time I returned to the dining table, the entire brownie was gone so I didn't get to try much of it. I can happily say that everyone liked it though. 👍
