Mocha Pecan Brownies

Happy Birthday Dad! I made these delicious brownies for my Dad’s birthday as he loves chocolate, coffee and nuts! Normally I buy him chocolate covered brazil nuts so I’m sure this was a nice change for him. This is a Waitrose recipe I found in store featuring Starbucks VIA. Now I love Starbucks, love everything in there with my all time favourite being their peach and raspberry muffin, so obviously this recipe appeals to me too and my hands still smell like coffee, yum!

For this recipe you have to prepare three elements separately before bringing them all together. First off is melting the chocolate and the butter together so you have time for it to cool while doing the other elements. Personally I prefer melting it in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water so you can keep and eye on the mixture the whole time but unfortunately I broke my big glass bowl so I had to use the microwave in this instance.

Next mix all the dry ingredients together and put to one side. Finally, whisk the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer for ages! Basically until it’s grown in size and is thick and mousse like. The same technique as used to make Death by Chocolate. Then you add the chocolate, followed by the flour mixture and then the pecans and then you’re ready to bake! After reading the intro to my vegan baking book, it says to bake brownies in a glass dish to stop the outside getting too cooked. Don’t ask me how but if you can, use a glass dish just in case!

Personally I don’t really like pecans but when smothered in chocolatey coffee brownie goodness, it’s hard to remember why! Amazing brownies and I’ll definitely be making these again, maybe with white chocolate chunks instead of pecans next time…

Vegan Chocolate Chip and Pecan Cookies

“I’d like some vegan cookies that are sweet and nutty”. That was the ‘job description’ given to me by a girl at work requesting some baking. I knew Rose had made some pecan cookies recently that she loved so I established that pecans were liked and then left for the weekend with that in mind. It turned out Rose couldn’t find the recipe she used so I set about finding a new one. After some internet browsing I came across this recipe from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes by Kris Holechek as a preview on googlebooks. While I was at university I lived on googlebooks and it’s pretty much where I got ALL my references from but it never occurred to me to look for previews of recipe books on there… until now!

This recipe looked straightforward and didn’t require things I’d never heard of that were popping up in a lot of other recipes I’d seen. And I was right! It totally was. Although I must admit I find soya milk completely revolting. The colour and the smell were so unappealing but then I have the same feelings towards milk of any kind so I shouldn’t be surprised. The mixture came together really well and was really fun to make! I should, however, have used chocolate chips or cut my plain chocolate into smaller pieces as they were pretty huge in places causing the cookies to be a little fragile.

I even got to use my new cookie scooper (basically an ice cream scoop with a bit to scoop out the inside) to try and make them all the same size to improve my usual presentation. The scoop worked really well I just ruined it myself by putting them too close together! While almost every cookie recipe I have tried has not spread, typically, this one did so some of them looked very square or even triangular! Luckily there were at least 12 regular ones for me to give to my friend at work.

With both chocolate chips and pecan nuts I’m hoping these fit the sweet and nutty criteria they were designed to meet and I’ve definitely found my new favourite cookie recipe and I will be buying the book to see all the other recipes! Let’s hope my friend likes them too!