Chocolate Beetroot Lavender Brownies Recipe. Vegan.

Some recipes are so complicated and they use oil, which is highly calorific and refined sugars and eggs and so on but these brownies are completely Vegan, refined sugar-free and have no oil or dairy products in and are even made with gluten-free ingredients. They are immensely tasty and feel really indulgent on the tongue and as long as you are sensible, you can enjoy them on a calorie controlled diet and still lose weight, just as I have been doing.

I am really, really proud of these moist and sophisticated brownies, where a lot of thought has gone into the ingredients chosen and we have specifically used Fairly Traded products, with organic and sustainable ingredients sourced from local and independent wholesalers.

Just a note about the way I set out my recipes:
I find the way that recipes are conventionally written,  are not the way that I like to follow them! Normal procedure is to mention the pre-heated oven somewhere in the middle when you need to put the batter in, instead of mentioning the pre-heated oven as one of the first things you should do. So, here's my recipe, written as I and I am sure, any logically-minded person would like to follow it.


1/ Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2/ Take a 9" x 9" square brownie tin, line with grease proof paper.

3/ Place the following ingredients into a blender:

1 x Cup of Sliced Cooked Beetroot

1 x Cup and 2 x Tablespoons of Buckwheat Flour

1 x Cup of Raw Cane Sugar

Half a Cup of Cocoa powder.

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 a teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda

1 x teaspoon of Doves Farm Gluten Free Baking Powder.

1 x teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

A pinch of ginger.

1 x a cup of water.

4/ Blend it all together, I use the smoothie setting on my blender.

5/ Smash up a bar of Seed and Bean Lavender Chocolate and stir it into the mix. (if you want another flavour, then just replace the Seed and Bean Lavender Chocolate with something else, I sometimes use Lemon and Cardamom, also from Seed and Bean and sometimes I use a Lemon, Ginger and Black Pepper bar from Equal Exchange).

6/ Then pour the whole mixture into the brownie tin and cook for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, carefully cover the pan with foil and cook for another 10 minutes. 

Don't forget, you can buy all the ingredients you need in our shop, online and instore.

Enjoy but if you can't be bothered to make them yourself, just pay us a visit in Shepton Mallet and we will make them for you.

Nutrition Facts
Servings 9.0
Amount Per Serving
calories 206
% Daily Value *
Total Fat 1 g	1 %
Saturated Fat 0 g	0 %
Monounsaturated Fat 0 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0 g
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 0 mg	0 %
Sodium 154 mg	6 %
Potassium 0 mg	0 %
Total Carbohydrate 35 g	12 %
Dietary Fiber 2 g	8 %
Sugars 24 g
Protein 2 g	4 %
Vitamin A	0 %
Vitamin C	0 %
Calcium	0 %
Iron	0 %
* The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so your values may change depending on your calorie needs. The values here may not be 100% accurate because the recipes have not been professionally evaluated nor have they been evaluated by the U.S. FDA.

My Delicious Vegan and Gluten-Free Spicy Black Bean Chocolate Brownies

I am posting this yummy recipe, especially for one of our regular customers, who keeps asking me for it. So here is is for you.

I know most coffee shops and restaurants don't usually release their secret recipes but I am going to put them all into a cook book one day, so this is my little method of getting it all down before you actually have to pay for it! (I didn't want to write that bit but our customer Rob, who can hear what I am writing because I keep reading it out, keeps piping up with suggestions in the background and he said that he hopes you buy the book anyway, as a matter of fact, I agree with him).

I wanted to create a brownie that everyone could enjoy, the catch word I like to think of in our shop is inclusivity, (It's probably not a real word but it could be one day). I want everyone to be able to eat the same thing and not worry about allergies, or health issues, or weight gain and so on. So, I try to make things that all the different groups of minority eaters can enjoy together.

The great thing about these Brownies is if you swap the Divine Bar of chocolate for the Hasslacher's 100% Cacao option, they are perfectly suitable for a clean eating paleo diet, with no refined sugar in.

Here we go then:

1/ Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2/ Take a 9" x 9" square brownie tin, line with grease proof paper.

Take one 400g can of drained black beans and put into a blender.

2/ Add two dessertspoons of Divine Cocoa powder.

3/ Meanwhile take 1/4 of a cup of Biona Organics mild coconut oil and put it in a warm place to melt. I normally put mine in a bowl of hot water.

4/ Take 1/3 a cup of Chantico Organic Agave Sweetner and pour into the ingredients that are already in the blender.

5/ Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of Taylor and Colledge Vanilla Bean Extract vanilla essence and 1/2 a teaspoon of Doves Farm Gluten Free Baking Powder.

6/ Take half a cup of gluten-free Glebe Farm Oats and add to the ingredients in the blender.

7/ Add a pinch of ginger and a pinch of chilli, or leave out, or put more in according to your taste!

8/ Pour your melted coconut oil into the ingredients in the blend and then blend. I use a smoothie setting on mine.

9/ Smash up a 100g bar of Divine Chocolate. This has sugar in it, so for a cleaner option, you could use Hasslacher's 100% Cacao. Just use about 8 cubes, as it is very intense, if you love bitter, you'll love it with this chocolate! Then stir whichever smashed up chocolate you have chosen into the mix.

10/ Then pour the whole mixture into the brownie tin and cook for 19 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Get the ingredients now for the Hasslacher's Version

Get the ingredients now for the Divine Chocolate Version.



Nutritional Information.

This recipe makes 9 portions.

The Hasslacher's Version is about 127 calories per serving.
13.5g Carbs Sugars 7g
6.8g Fat Saturated is 5.8g
2.9g Protein
64.6mg Sodium
5.3% Iron


The Divine Chocolate Version is about 165 calories per serving.
20.5g Carbs Sugars 12.7g
Fats 8.7g
Saturated 10.6g
Polyunsaturated 2g
Monounsaturated 1.7g
Trans 2.3g
Sodium 394.4mg
Potassium 284.3mg
Dietry Fiber 3.8g
Protein 3g
Calcium 1.5%
Iron 8.5%

Best Brownies Ever, Fairtrade, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, with Free-Range Eggs in just TEN STEPS

It's not every day that you go to someone's funeral and taste a cake that is so deliciously chocolatey and gooey and chewy, all that same time, that you have to ask the person who gave it to you from her tin, for the recipe. 'Ah', she responded,'It is a secret family recipe and I can't tell it to you.' I knew that I had to get that recipe, it couldn't remain a secret any longer, I wanted my customers in my shop to be able to enjoy a slice of this indulgent deliciousness with their coffee. Poor lady at the funeral, I followed her around asking and asking, finally, she smiled a secret, cheeky smile and told me the truth, that it comes out of a packet mix from Costco.

So, we went to Costco and found the mix that she was talking about and it was so easy, we just had to add some oil and some eggs and they came out perfectly, every time, which was great for me, as I don't see myself as a naturally great cook, I'm the kind of person that would always burn myself when cooking, or burn what I was cooking! Also, my concentration is not my strong point, so remembering where I am in a recipe or even planning ahead to pre-heat the oven, is still an achievement in itself. That I suppose, would be the end of the story, if I didn't feel passionately about Fairtrade and making sure that our cakes do something to help heal the planet and are ethical too. I called up the mix manufacturer and asked if they would be doing a Fairtrade version, with Fairtrade chocolate and sugar in and they said that it wasn't on their radar at all. I was really disappointed and after a lot of thinking decided to try to create a recipe as simple as theirs, no egg separation needed, no fancy stuff, just quick ingredients that you can throw in the bowl and then cook and it comes out right, every time, no matter who makes it and it is Fairtrade and I decided that I wanted to make it Gluten-Free too.

So, I tried and I tried and I tried, again and again and our customers were lucky enough to taste them and tell us what they wanted it to taste like, then one day, after lots of failures, I created a recipe that tasted so beautiful, gooey, chewy and rich but with a clean aftertaste! Success! Not only that but it was Fairtrade and Gluten-free too.

Well, after that build-up, you'll want the recipe now, won't you!

I write my recipes as step by step instructions, how you would do things logically, none of this suddenly being told to put things in a pre-heated oven, without being told it needed to be pare-heated, at the beginning of the recipe.

Best Brownies Ever, Fairtrade, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, with Free Range Eggs. Suitable for Vegetarians.

1/ Preheat the oven to 170 Degrees Celsius

2/ Line a 9 x 13 inch baking tray with grease-proof paper and grease with oil.

3/ Into a big bowl put 450g of raw cane caster sugar, Fairtrade, with 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon of Fairtrade Vanilla Extract. Mix together well, with a fork.

4/ Into a measuring jug, measure out 200ml of vegetable oil, then add 70g of Divine Cocoa Powder. Mix these together well with a fork and then add to the sugar and egg mix and mix it all together.

5/Next, measure out 120g of Doves Farm Organic Gluten Free Self Raising Flour and add 1 and a half teaspoons of Doves Farm Gluten Free Baking powder and add this to the chocolatey mixture, stir in well.

6/ Take a 100g bar of Divine Dark Chocolate and smash into pieces whilst still in the packet, using a rolling pin, I prefer a hammer though!

7/ Mix the chocolate pieces into the mix.

8/ Pour and scrape the mix into the prepared baking tray.

9/ Place in to the preheated oven for 19 minutes. Then take out, cover with foil and place in the oven for another 19 minutes.

10/ Take the brownies out and give them time to cool, then serve up and enjoy!

These brownies are great for a teatime treat, or even as an extra delicious dessert. If you can't be bothered to make them for yourself, then please pop into our shop and get some.

These brownies are full of sugar, so they are not the healthiest thing in the world to eat but they are very, very tasty and enjoyable!