Brownies!!!

Joe's favorite thing, and thus Eliott's favorite thing, has always been my chocolate chip cookies. Thats a big N-O on the new food plan, and while I've tried my hand at a couple different cookie recipes (I fully plan to share that experience at a later time!), I began to research other sweet treats for Eli to enjoy! I ran accross multiple chocolate cake/cookie/brownie recipes, probably because the strong - and delicious, I might add- flavor of the cocoa adds depth and richness to baked goods and also covers up the 'off' taste of the non-wheat flours. Eliott thought brownies sounded like a great idea, so I put on my recipe-combining hat and using basic ratios from a few different recipes, adjusting them to use only ingredients that are "happy belly", and my newly ever-expanding knowledge of alternative baking ingredients, I derived a recipe that I felt would result in passable brownies.

Well, the looked like brownies, and they smelled like brownies, and they pretty much tasted like brownies, but they still had a "grit" in them that I find to be unappetizing in wheat free home-baked items. However, flavor, loft, crumb- all great, so though not 100% satisfied with the result, I considered it a successful trial; especially for a first!

Eliott likes these a lot, and continues to eat them when they are cool...3 days later...so that is a very good sign.  I think he just downs the little buggers so fast that he doesn't  even feel the tell-tale grit!

This grit was STILL nagging at me, so I did a raw flours taste test (which is to be discussed more in-depth in "Non-Wheat Flours"). I have narrowed it down to RICE flour as being the culprit, and revised my recipe to remove it, made a few other minor tweeks, and I am happy to say that this was the result:

Now, THAT is a success!!! Though they weren't baked yet, I had very high expectations for this, my second ever batch of wheat- and (conventional) sugar-free brownies. Does that look like a NORMAL pan of brownies, or what!!!

They are moist and dense, as a brownie should be. They have a tender crumb, but with a slight chewiness to them (yay for oat flour!), and a rich, undeniably chocolate taste. With a now-smooth finish, this pan of bad boys is about to hit my taste-testing guinea pigs!

So, the verdict is in, and I have mastered a FODMaP Brownie recipe in a record of  only *2* tries!

(Eliott says that "These are th BEST brownies ever in the whole wide universe, Mom!" and that is really the only opinion that matters to me!)