Chocolate Brookies - Gluten & Dairy Free

Chocolate brookies, a brownie cookie hybrid. Soft and gooey on the inside, crunchy on the outside and completely addictive.

I first spotted these little delights in beauty blogger Lily Pebbles vlogmas series on YouTube. For those you aren't familiar, 'vlogmas' is when blogger's video blog (see what they did there) every day leading up to Christmas, giving you a mini reality series of what they get up to in the festive period! If you're like me and a beauty product junkie, you'll love Lily's vlogs and can check her out here. (She does more than just combine words, promise....although I have no complaints regarding Brookie vlogging.)

As Brookies are meant to be fudgey in texture, they are very forgiving for substituting gluten free flour. I also doubled the size of each Brookie to make them cookie sized. I'd love to say this was for some baking reason, but no it was purely because I'm greedy and wanted them big! But you can roll them smaller to make them more 'snack' size over 'hey it's Christmas let's be a chubs' size.

These were so easy to make, look great and totally remind me of the Flintstones! Pretty appropriate considering they were brought into my life by Miss Pebbles...(picture below...she is clearly sitting on a Brookie! Coincidence? I think not). 

Makes: 24 brookies at cookie size

Prep: 20 minutes (with optional 4 hour chill time)

Cook: 20 minutes

Pre-heat oven: 180 degrees/ gas mark 4

Ingredients:

85g cocoa powder (I used Cadbury Fair Trade Bournville Cocoa)

400g caster sugar

125ml vegetable or sunflower oil (I used sunflower over vegetable) 

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

250g gluten free flour (I used Dove Farm Plain White Gluten Free Flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

60g icing sugar (which is approximately how much it takes to coat the Brookies)

1. Baking time! In a bowl, mix together your cocoa powder, caster sugar and oil. 
2. Beat in the eggs and add the vanilla extract. 
   
3. Add the flour, baking powder and salt.
4. At this point, Lily recommends you chill your mixture for at least 4 hours. I only managed to chill my mixture for 2 hours as I had people coming over who needed feeding! But the Brookies still tasted great! However I would recommend getting in as much of the chill time as you can, as this makes it much easier to form each Brookie ball.
5. Line your trays with baking paper. I needed 2 baking trays. 
6. Pour icing sugar onto a plate. Using two spoons, roll the mixture into 4cm balls to make your Brookies.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Coat each ball with the icing sugar before placing onto prepared trays. I thought this would be fiddly but it really wasn't. Simply scoop up some mixture with your spoon, roughly shape by transferring between the spoons, plop on your plate, sprinkle some icing sugar over the top, then roughly roll around to ensure it is fully coated in icing sugar.
   
8. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. 
9. Leave them to cool for a couple of minutes on the trays before transferring to a wire rack till completely cool. 

Pebbles Image: English Exercises