Gluten-free chocolate brownies

I truly love posting about dessert.  I am a huge fan of baking – we have a rich and rightly-celebrated baking culture in our little country and I am happy to leap in, butter, cream and all.  It feels particularly necessary right now, as Winter clings to the bitter end and another round of fertility drugs has me breaking out in shivers, aches and pimples.  Despite the whole point of my little blog being cooking and sharing, it wasn’t until recently I realised that I might be excluding treasured friends and readers who can’t tuck into on gluten and diary with quite such gay abandon.  I am sorry my lovely readers!  And so today I am bring you my very own gluten-free chocolate brownie.

I have developed this over the past couple of years for my beloved little nephew who has suffered much unexplained ill-health, resulting in a spell as a tube-fed tot.  Next time you spot a little one with a tube, give a smile to their parents – it’s damned hard work, tears and sadness.  Happily our lovely little tyke is much better these days.  He has a lot of gluten-free food, both for the sake of his little system and also because ground almond-based baking helps him to pack in much-needed calories.

Now, you will notice I call this gluten free, but not dairy-free.  I have not experimented with replacing the butter with non-diary spread, but I reckon you could.

Give it a try – it really is pretty simple for a gluten-free bake and deliciously rich for pudding, warm with a little cream.

Ingredients:

250g chocolate- either all dark, or half dark and half milk

100g butter

2 C ground almonds

1/3 C brown sugar

1/8 t salt

3 eggs, beaten together

1 t vanilla essence

Method:

Set the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease a 20cm x 30cm baking tin. Set a pan of water to simmer on the stove.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a large bowl over the simmering water. This is honestly my favourite bit, I love watching the butter and chocolate swirl and melt together.

Once melted and combined, take the bowl off the heat. Add the dry ingredients and stir until combined.

Add the eggs and vanilla, mix it all in and pour into the prepared tin.

Bake for 25 minutes or until just firm on top.