Vegan chocolate and prune brownies

How do you substitute the butter and eggs in a vegan baking recipe?

Instead of butter you can use a flavourless or lightly-flavoured oil, such as vegetable oil. If you look through a few muffin recipes, you’ll be sure to come across some using oil. You can also use dairy-free margarine in place of butter, this is what I usually do and it produces the same results as using butter.

The eggs are a bit more tricky. After a Google search I found something called a flax egg. Basically it’s flax seeds (also known as linseeds), which you grind into a powder, then add water, whisk and pop into the fridge for at least ½ hour, but preferably 1 hour. The mixture goes gloopy and this is what binds the brownies in place of eggs.

These vegan brownies are fudge-y and exude the flavour of dark chocolate with little sticky, chewy bites of sweet prune. I use Californian Prunes, which are a favourite of mine, but to be honest any prunes would do.

The brownies are a little more crumbly than traditional brownies, but this could be due to the fact I used flax seeds mixed with goji berries.

For more information, here's a guide to staple alternative ingredients for a vegan diet.