I was given some Callebaut cocoa powder from a fellow baker recently. I’ve been trying to find new ways to try out this treat. I made some chocolate raspberry brownies that were wonderful and some chocolate cupcakes that were not. Wow, those cupcakes have to go down as one of the worst things I’ve ever made. It’s my own fault for trying to veganize a recipe and not really know what I was doing. Ha ha.

Not wanting to end in failure, I used a tested vegan recipe from “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar”.  These ladies have never let me down, and once again they came through with an amazing marriage of chocolate and coffee in a gooey, rich package.

I highly recommend this book. If you are new to vegan baking, make sure to read the beginning to see what ingredients you may not have in your pantry. There are some tricks to getting traditional favorites to work without the use of dairy and eggs.

The Espresso Fudge Brownies were a good choice because I had everything on hand including some good dark chocolate, the Callebaut cocoa powder and some espresso powder. The mix came easily together in one bowl, which is also a big plus. Less clean up makes me a happy baker. I feel like I’m always cleaning up after I make a huge mess in the kitchen. I’m thinking of training the cats as sous chefs. I’m not sure sous chefs do actual clean up, or just prep work. I’m also pretty sure they would just get cat hair in everything. I may have to rethink that plan.

The brownies did turn out very well.  I don’t have permission to post the recipe, but it is available in the book. You can preview some of the recipes using the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon.com or Google Books. Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a lovely person who shares many of her recipes on the Post Punk Kitchen. Check out her site and buy her book. It’s well worth it to support such an awesome asset to the vegan world.