Dark Chocolate Gluten Free Brownies

  Brownies are basically the only dessert that everyone in my entire family agrees on {but there's a debate on  if they should have nuts or not} so I tend to try and post a lot of different brownie recipes. I'd actually bookmarked this recipe a few months ago and  figured that since I am hosting a giveaway for coconut oil it would the perfect time to make and share this recipe. 

  These brownies have a rich chocolate base and the coconut oil gives them a light coconut[y]-vanilla tone that gets a little stronger as the brownies age. I used Tropical Traditions Virgin Coconut Oil which has a milder flavor compared to other brands that I have tried. The ingredients for these brownies can be mixed together and ready for the oven in about 5 minutes which is another reason to love this recipe.

Plus, they taste really really good :)

Instagram, Raw Brownies, & A Future Giveaway

I'm letting you know now that this post involves several different topics and may be lengthy.

  This past Saturday my mom and I along with our assistant pastor, his wife, three of his girls, his sister (our past youth leader), his niece, and nephew went shopping at the Grapevine outlet mall as a day of fun. We all met up at cracker barrel for a late breakfast before spending 7 hours roaming the very crowded mall.  My mom was told by some friends that we had to eat at the Rainforest Cafe because it is a unique experience so we made reservations to have a late lunch/early dinner. When it's was time to be seated, we were lead into a dark room that is heavily decorated to look like a rain forest with mist machines at the bar, mechanic animals that move every few minutes with sound effects, and the staff was dressed like safari guides.

Healthy Zucchini Brownies (Paleo)

  The "usual" brownie recipe contains butter, cups of sugar, oil, eggs, cocoa powder, and flour. This brownie recipe doesn't contain any of the above except 1 egg.  Some might argue that this dessert isn't a "brownie"  because the batter doesn't contain cocoa powder or melted chocolate, just chocolate chips that melt when baking. Some might categorize this as a healthy blondie, chocolate chip zucchini bread,  or a snack cake which is okay.

   I found this recipe about a week ago when searching from a healthy chocolate recipe. The more I searched for chocolate recipes that contained zucchini, the more I discovered that a lot of people have made this recipe and blogged about it. I noticed that in some pictures, the brownies were more of a golden brown color instead of the rich, chocolate brown in the original picture. For a second I thought about adding some cocoa into the batter thinking it may not be chocolaty enough, but decided against it to try how I liked the original recipe as is first and I'm glad I did. I did add 2 tablespoons of mini chocolate chip on the top of the brownies since it was all that was leftover from another recipe. 

The Baked Brownies & Giveaway Winners

 This actually wasn't the recipe that I was going to make for the family dinner this weekend, but since my aunt, Angie (the one who recently moved back) has a birthday soon and she likes brownies I decided to make a batch.

  Angie is a very, very picky eater. She doesn't like fruits, only eats a few vegetables,and she only likes simple flavors. She didn't even like this and it was a huge hit at Thanksgiving, but she likes plain (nut-free) brownies. I knew that I couldn't add any special ingredients like roasted cherries, bourbon vanilla, or anything like that in the dessert or she wouldn't touch it so I looked up for a basic brownie recipe. The recipe also had to make enough to serve a big crowd since there were going to be 15 adults, a 4 1/2 year old, an almost 1 year old, and a 2 month old at this Sunday's dinner. 

Roasted Cherry Dark Chocolate Brownies

   I'm warning ya'll now that this is the 2nd cherry recipe that I've shared so far and I have at least 2 more to share this summer. One is a recipe for a cherry fruit drink that I made up and the other is a cherry sauce/jam which you can have on yogurt, biscuits, or in drinks.I'll try to space out the recipes so I won't be overloading ya'll with 3 cherry recipes back to back; sometimes, I get a little hung up on a certain ingredient or dish and right now it's cherries.

   I found this recipe through Foodgawker and I knew I had to make it since it involved three of my favorite things: cherries, dark chocolate, and brownies! I told my dad about the recipe to see if he had every tried anything like it before and he said that he had, but those brownies were about 80% cherries & 20% brownie. I thought this recipe would be a winner since it only has 1 cup of cherries so they won't over load the dish and that everyone in our family  house are brownie-fanatics so it would be good. 

Chocolate Chunk Fudge Brownies

We finally finished Hedgie's new cage. We had him in a rabbit/small animal cage, but I wanted him to have a cage with bedding (instead of his blanket) for an easier clean up and to where he could use his wheel, which he refused to run on for months until now.This is what we started out with and this is what his new cage looks like now, its nothing fancy, but he enjoys it.

I actually made honey cornbread muffins yesterday to use up the extra buttermilk I had from the red velvet cupcakes, but I decided to post this recipe first since I talked about in the last post.

  I found this recipe in one of the many magazines that my mom brings home from work when they have leftovers that they didn't sell. I was going to make sweet sweet potatoes fries and call it "dessert" since I don't like eating sweet potatoes with my meal, but as dessert. Well, my dad didn't think that could be classified as a dessert so I made this recipe instead. I looked online like I do with most of the recipes I find to see if someone had already tried it or had any suggestions about it. I found the recipe online and the reviews were all good, but many said that they would lower the amount of sugar since the batter had 1 2/3 cups of sugar that made an 8x8 pan. I looked up another brownie recipe that I had to try to figure out how much sugar to add. That recipe only had 1 cup of sugar and made a big pan of brownies, so I decided to only add 1 1/4 cups of sugar to my new recipe to try it out.

Brownies

  In our house, we are brownie fans.
  Its one of the only desserts that everyone in our house (and our family) can agree on. Some prefer cookies, some ice cream, but everyone always agrees on brownies. Now we do have "brownies with nuts" fans and the "no nuts" fans. I generally like them both equally, though if I could only ever have 1 brownie for the rest of my life, I would choose the one with nuts.

    One thing is my dad would lick the spoon if it had brownie batter on it ,but will get upset if I eat a piece of cookie dough... it doesn't make much sense to me.

  I have another brownie recipe from scratch: brownie recipe with chocolate icing , but I needed a brownie recipe for our youth's brownie bake sale this Sunday and I didn't want to use a box mix. I decided not to use the recipe I already have because it is topped with icing, which is yummy, but can be messy-especially if you pre-cut and package them for sale. I found 1 recipe from saveur, but it made a 9x13 pan and I would have to 1/2 the recipe to make a test batch which I didn't feel like doing the day that I made these.  I actually have a good amount of brownie and blondie recipes that I wish to test out in the future.

Simple Brownie Recipe with a Chocolate Frosting

For the past few months, my grandparents, my aunt, and uncle have been coming out the the ranch on Sunday nights so we can have dinner and see each other since we all go to different churchs now, and dont get to see each other that often. Well I found a recipe for brownies and I thought that I could make it for our sunday dinner since everyone in my family loves sweets, especially brownies. I decided to make a 1/2 batch yesterday, just to make sure that they tasted good, before i made it for everyone else to eat. (pictured below)

The brownies turned out to not only be simple to make, but they tasted good too. If you usually make a store bought brownie mix, and you think that this recipe will taste similar, then you would be wrong. These brownies are rich and fudgy and oh so decadent.I ended up letting my parents have a small piece and took the rest over to a family friend who works at a salon, so she and her clients could have something sweet to eat.
 There is also a frosting that you can make which you can use on the brownies or omit.

Here is the Recipe: