Chocolate Brownies

Today my sisters and I baked some brownies for my mom and dad, my dad is also gluten-free so we found a delicious recipe in my moms gluten free cook book. These brownies are gluten free and wheat free but unfortunately they do have dairy in them although you can substitute the chocolate and margarine with dairy free ones, you can get delicious dairy free chocolate from the wellness center in Palmyra Junction on main road in Claremont, Cape town, South Africa.  

Ingredients

• 70g margarine
• 100g dark chocolate (I used mint dark chocolate and it gave the brownies a lovely minty taste)
• 3/4 cup of castor sugar
• 2 large eggs - beaten 
• 1/2 cup of rice flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of pure Madagascan vanilla essence (I used normal vanilla extract) 
• 70g of chopped pecan nuts (I forgot to chop them and the recipe turned out fine, although it was a little hard to cut the brownies when nuts kept getting in the way.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 oC. 
2. Grease a 28cm/11 inch rectangular non-stick baking tin with spray and cook or sunflower oil.
3. Melt the margarine and chocolate in a saucepan over a very low heat, stirring constantly.
4. Remove from the heat, add the sugar and allow to cool slighty. 
5. Mix in the beaten eggs, then sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and fold in the vanilla extract and the chopped nuts. 
6. Pour the mixture in to the baking tin and bake for 30 minutes. 
7. test with an inserted skewer that it is just cooked through (the skewer should come out clean.) 
8. Cool in the tin and cut into squares

*When you take the brownies out do it with care as they can be quite crumbly.