V for Vegan Vendetta

If you have a vegan friend to include in a celebration, you had damn well better make sure they have something with which to celebrate. I’m making a separate, vegan alternative to the sheet cake. And since I know that separate but equal is inherently unequal, I’m not shooting for an equally good vegan dessert. I’m shooting for a superior one.

To do this, I paged through the Rebar Modern Food Cookbook. It’s the house cookbook of a regionally famous (so I’m told) restaurant in Victoria, BC. I figured that if anyone knows how to smack down a sheet cake, it will be Pacific Northwest hipsters. Hmm, vegan fudge brownies sound good… but wait, whaaaa?

“Sprinkle the top with carob chips…”

No. Nothing says “sanctimonious hater of pleasure” like carob. Plus, I examined a bag of “organic vegan carob chips” at Whole Foods: “Contains traces of milk.” Would someone with a first grader’s reasoning skills please call these people and help them reconcile the front of their bag with the back?!

The icing part of the recipe also annoyed me. You melt together some dark chocolate and some… ech… margarine. Oh hells no, not in my house. I used virgin coconut oil instead. It is solid at room temperature and melts at body temperature. Just like the butter it is so obviously meant to replace.

Hmm, well it doesn’t look like it’s going to shame any sheet cakes. The middle sank and the glaze did nothing to conceal this fact. So I embellished it with a floopy letter V for Vegan made of slivered almonds. Tomorrow we can add an update about how the brownies taste.

To be continued! Continued:
The verdict: “Super-ass delicious.” The vegan brownies beat the sheet! Haha, now V stands for Victory in my Vegan Vendetta.

Rebar vegan fudge brownies with the crap ingredients replaced
I also left out the ½ c chopped toasted walnuts because walnuts, ech.

1½ c flour
½ c cocoa
1½ c brown sugar
1½ t baking soda
¾ t baking powder
1 t salt
¾ c coffee
¾ c soy milk
⅓ c vegetable oil
½ c dark chocolate chips – NOT milk chocolate, yo.

Glaze:
7 oz dark chocolate
5 oz coconut oil

Heat oven to 325°. Grease a 9 x 9 pan and line it with parchment.

Sift together the dry ingredients except the chocolate chips. Combine the wet ingredients. Then stir everything together well. (Do not mix in any walnuts here. That is just a nasty, nasty thing to do to brownies.) Pour the batter in the pan and sprinkle the chocolate chips on top. Bake about 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

Melt the chocolate and coconut oil together, stirring well. Pour the glaze over the brownies, then put in the refrigerator to set. Cut into 12 squares.