What better way to finish off a week than with chocolate? After I made chocolate hazelnut butter, my first thought was to make chocolate hazelnut brownies. For some reason, that sounded familiar; sure enough I looked back through the recipe pages to see that I made those last Winter. I made a few changes to the recipe this time around and took some higher quality photos to show you just how good these are.

These brownies aren’t quite cakey but aren’t quite fudgy, either; they’re in between. You can use store-bought or homemade chocolate hazelnut spread. Since the recipe doesn’t call for eggs to begin with, these are really easy to make vegan; simply swap out the butter for non-dairy margarine and use water or a non-dairy milk for the liquid.

Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients(Makes 16 brownies):

• 1/2 cup chocolate hazelnut spread
• 1/4 cup room temperature butter
• 3/4 cup cane sugar
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour(I used all-purpose gluten-free flour)
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup water or milk
• 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon chocolate chips(optional)
• 1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts(optional)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
2. In a large bowl, cream the chocolate hazelnut butter, sugar, and butter together.
3. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda.
4. Pour in your liquid and mix until the batter comes together uniformly.
5. Fold in any chocolate chips or hazelnuts you might be using.
6. Grease an 8×8 baking pan and press the batter in in an even layer.
7. Bake for 28-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
8. Take out of the oven and let cool completely before cutting in.

I didn’t add hazelnuts or chocolate chips into the batter and since that felt a little boring I gave these a chocolate icing to make them a little more special. Mission accomplished.

Sunday we went to Maine to celebrate Father’s Day with relatives. I didn’t need any more of an excuse to start baking. I’d already had this cake recipe in my head and couldn’t wait to try it out.

The body of the cake is made with just almond flour, making it gluten and grain-free and lending a slightly nutty flavor. Because almond flour isn’t all that absorbent, the cake comes out slightly dense and fudgy. I don’t know about you, but those are two adjectives I like to describe my cakes. The cake isn’t all that sweet, though, so the glaze adds that final punch of flavor that makes it a show stopper. This cake recipe will become my standard for frosted and layer cakes.

Dark Chocolate Almond Meal Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups finely ground almond meal
• 3/4 cup cane sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3oz unsweetened chocolate
• 1/4 cup neutral oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Sift together the almond meal, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda. Whisk in the eggs, oil, vanilla extract, and egg whites completely.

Melt the chocolate in a microwave or over a double boiler and fold that into the cake batter until it’s completely emulsified. Pour the cake into a cake pan and bake for about 25 minutes or until the center has set. Remove from the oven and let cool.

This is a great gluten-free cake on its own, but it’s not incredibly sweet nor does it have much else going for it. This cake really begs for a frosting or a glaze of some sort, and what goes better with chocolate than peanut butter?

Peanut Butter Glaze

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• Water to thin

Scoop the peanut butter into a large bowl. Slowly sift in the powdered sugar, mixing it in little by little. When the sugar is completely incorporated, pour in the maple syrup and stir. Slowly incorporate water until the frosting reaches a glaze-like consistency. Pour the glaze over the cake and level out.

I decorated mine with Trader Joe’s miniature peanut butter cups and cut it up into 14 slices. I couldn’t believe how well this turned out on the first try. The cake is somewhere between cakey and fudgy, which isn’t and easy balance to strike with gluten-free flours. And the peanut butter glaze doesn’t over power the rich chocolate in the cake.

I’ve set a goal to only have one slice a day. So far that’s not going so well.

After I baked this cake recipe for my birthday, the cake looked good but a little plain so I decided to throw together something for the top. I love the pairing of raspberries with chocolate so I decided to make a raspberry chocolate sauce to go on top. I had no clue how it would turn out but I’m happy to report it was perfect. Heated, the sauce is easy to work with and at room temperature it hardened to a semi-soft, fudge consistency which was easy to cut through. It was great on cake but would be good over ice cream, too.

Raspberry Fudge Sauce

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons maple syrup(or any liquid sweetener)
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Heat the raspberries over low heat in a sauce pan until they’ve reduced to about half their volume and cooked down to a sauce.

Toss in the chocolate chips, butter, maple syrup, and salt and mix until the butter and chocolate chips have melted. Frost or scoop over ice cream while the sauce is still warm and liquid.

I should have made extra to eat with a spoon; one year older, still not wise enough.

Question: How do you make coconut blondies even better? Answer: You give them an awesome and delicious frosting.

I know I said these are so good that they don’t need any frosting, but really, what doesn’t frosting make better? I was reading in this NY Times article on coconut oil that it makes a great, smooth vegan frosting so I wanted to try it out. If you don’t have coconut oil, room-temperature non-hydrogenated shortening would also work well in this recipe.

The flavor reminds me of a lemon slurpee or an Italian ice. It’s really sweet and refreshing. It goes perfectly with the coconut, but would also work with any vanilla cake. And it takes about a minute to come together! You can’t beat that.

Lemon Drop Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Start by mixing room-temperature coconut oil and lemon juice. If your coconut oil is too hard to begin with, gently heat it to the point where it’s semi-soft.

Gently sift in the sugar and continue folding until the frosting starts to come together.

Once the mixture’s homogenous and starts sticking to itself, it’s done.

The frosting should be rather soft and easy to spread.

Don’t worry if you eat more than you frost with; that’s completely normal. It’s also completely normal to pick off the frosting with a fork and eat it after you’ve frosted the blondies. These things happen.

Where was I?

Oh yes, the frosting. It turns out, the nomenclature of frosting is quite complicated. There’s “frosting”, “buttercream”, “icing”, “ganache”,—the list goes on. I can definitively say this is a “frosting”. I can also say it is damn delicious, too.

Peanut Butter Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter(or Earth Balance or coconut oil)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1/2 cup natural peanut butter
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt(omit if your peanut butter is salted)

In the microwave or over a stove, melt down the butter and heavy cream and emulsify. Stir in the peanut butter until it’s thin and runny.

Sift in the powdered sugar with the salt little by little and stir until it’s fully absorbed. The frosting should still be loose at this time.

Pour it over whatever you’re working with and spread evenly. Let the dessert cool to room temperature, or put it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to quicken things up. The frosting will be cooled when you can touch it and make an indent without any sticking to your finger.

How did this taste? Flippin’ amazing. Normally I’m against using chunky peanut butter for frosting, but it was all I had at the moment, and the chunky peanuts were a nice contrast from the soft, sweet blondies. I don’t think I have to tell you these didn’t last long…