Gluten-Free Coconut-Flour Brownies
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This post is part of The Nourishing Gourmet’s “Nourishing Sweets and Treats Carnival”. Please visit The Nourishing Gourmet to see more sweet treats made with healthy sweeteners.
I grew up loving brownies. Box brownies, of course. I knew how to make them by the time I was eight years old. But box brownies are not good for you. They are all sugar, white flour, and vegetable oil.
These homemade brownies have none of the gross vegetable oil. Just grass-fed butter and cream. And instead of nutrient-free white flour, this recipe uses healthy coconut flour. So if you’re gluten-free, you can eat this.
I found the recipe on the Tropical Traditions website — and I did make a few changes to it. Instead of using the brown sugar and brown rice syrup the recipe called for, I used rapadura (also known as sucanat) and maple syrup — much healthier sweeteners.
They also called for an 8 x 11 baking dish. I did not have one. I had an 8 x 8 baking dish, which is what I used. The brownies were too moist after 30 minutes, so I baked them for an additional 20 minutes, for a total of 50 minutes.
I also added one pinch of sea salt. It’s always a good idea to add a pinch of salt to anything sweet — the salt intensifies the sweetness.
I did use regular chocolate which does have some refined sugar. However, you can get chocolate sweetened with rapaura made by Rapunzel (I found it at Whole Foods).
The recipe says this makes 24 bars. This seems absolutely outlandish to me — unless you are eating TINY TINY bars. And who would want to do that?
Also, you will want to have some children on hand to lick the spoons and beaters and bowl and scraper. Otherwise you will have to do all of that yourself, like I did. Quite a lot of work, but if you don’t have children, I suppose you will have to manage. 
Ingredients:
8 ounces grass-fed butter (I used KerryGold)
2 cups rapadura (also called sucanat)
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 TBS real maple syrup
4 patsured eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup coconut flour (you can find this at Whole Foods or buy from Tropical Traditions)
4 TBS unsweetened organic cocoa powder
1 tsp aluminum-free baking powder
1/2 cup heavy cream (from grass-fed cows)
1 pinch sea salt
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8×8 baking dish with butter.
2. Add butter, rapadura, chocolate, and maple syrup to a medium saucepan and melt on low heat, stirring until everything is well blended and smooth.
3. Stir in the cocoa powder. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
4. Beat the eggs and vanilla extract together with an electric mixer until frothy. Then on low speed, mix in cooled chocolate mixture and sugar.
5. Add in the flour, heavy cream, baking powder, beating the mixture after each addition.
6. Pour mixture into the greased dish and bake the brownies in the preheated oven for 40-50 minutes or until the top of the brownies is crisp and the edges begin to pull away from the pan. (The original recipe called for 30 minutes but it was SUPER gooey when I pulled it out — so I stuck it back in for 20 minutes.)
7. Serve with a tall glass of raw milk.
These brownies taste delicious. Very fudgy and chocolately! However, I think the recipe still needs a tiny bit of tweaking. The texture was good — but not exactly right. Maybe I will try a couple more eggs…
There is another recipe for coconut flour brownies in Bruce Fife’s new book, “Cooking With Coconut Flour”. I think he uses more eggs. I am going to try that one next — I’ll let you know how it comes out.
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16/12/2008 at 12:06 am Permalink
Oh my ….’
How great these look – If I just could get coconut flour here…
Maybe almond flour and less butter would work…
16/12/2008 at 4:54 am Permalink
I don’t know about almond flour… might be too coarse. Maybe I will have to send you some coconut flour so you can make a batch.
16/12/2008 at 6:45 am Permalink
Ooh I can’t wait to try this! Love coconut and chocolate, two of my favorite things.
16/12/2008 at 6:50 am Permalink
Do these taste really coconutty?? Or is it just a slight coconut taste?
16/12/2008 at 6:56 am Permalink
;D I guess the customs would be crazy…
I know some girls who ordered some diapers in US they became the most expensive diapers ever !
I asked for it today in my local health shop – and she promised she would look out for it .
I´ll let you know how it is with almondflour
16/12/2008 at 8:32 am Permalink
Yum! I love brownies, and these look great, with my kind of ingredients! I too grew up on boxed brownies, and have found it difficult at times to get the right texture with homemade brownie recipes. This one might do the trick! Thanks!
Best,
Sarah
16/12/2008 at 8:43 am Permalink
I’m curious about the Kerrygold butter. Nothing on the package I looked at yesterday indicates it is from grass-fed herds. Do you know how/where I can confirm this? TJs sells it for a decent price, btw.
I’m stocking up on Organic Valley grassfed butter. They only produce it May-September, so I’m freezing some for later in the winter.
16/12/2008 at 8:57 am Permalink
YUM. Looks delicious. We sometimes make our own butter from raw sweet cream made from local pastured cows. It’s actually really easy to do in the blender!
16/12/2008 at 9:28 am Permalink
Anna :
http://www.tastebutter.com/about_kerrygold_butter.html
16/12/2008 at 10:47 am Permalink
Oh yummy! I still haven’t gotten any coconut flour, look at what we are missing out on!!
16/12/2008 at 12:50 pm Permalink
Oh, how delicious! Even in Australia we can get lots of coconut flour and Im stocked up right now. Im on 3 weeks holidays in exactly 48hrs and I cant wait to bake some of these with my girls. YAY for the holidays…and double YAY for these brownies
16/12/2008 at 1:31 pm Permalink
Yay! I’m glad you tried them. I see you used Callebaut bittersweet chocolate! Callebaut is my fave. In cooking school, we did a blind taste test and I preferred Callebaut over Scharffen Berger and others. I’ll have to look for the chocolate made with rapadura. I too found the brownies way to gooey after 30 min’s (I also used an 8×8 square and added pinch of sea salt!). I ended up cooking them a bit too long, prob about 55 minutes so they were very, very brown on the bottom and the consistency was more cake-like than fudgy. I mixed it by hand with a whisk and the batter got really, really thick. Still really good, but I agree, this recipe needs a little tweak. You’ll have to let me know how Bruce Fife’s brownie recipe turns out!
BTW I made the coconut flour bread. It was very tasty, but I think I should have mixed it with an electric mixer instead of by hand. It got really, really thick like the coconut flour brownie mix and came out really dense and didn’t rise much. It turned out like pound cake. I also think I should have added all the coconut flour at once, not in 3 parts (I was adding it 1/4 cup at a time, whisking after each addition which I think made the batter super thick). Did you use an electric mixer when you made your coconut flour bread?
16/12/2008 at 2:52 pm Permalink
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Wonder when they’ll come up with scratch and sniff pages…..it’s not taking much, but I think I can smell them now. Let me get just a little bit closer to the screen. Snnnnnnn!
Wow, that’s a ton of sugar! I’ll have to tweak it a bit more. I LOVE Rapunzel cocoa. Are they super sweet???
16/12/2008 at 7:25 pm Permalink
I am curious, my son, who has a TON of allergies and is deathly allergic to eggs, if there is a sub for the eggs in all the coconut flour recipes? Have you heard of any good ones? Thanks. I have TOTALLY been enjoying your blog btw! Thank you SO MUCH for sharing all your information with us. I know my fmaily is going to be so much healthier as a result.
17/12/2008 at 5:58 am Permalink
Hi, Jungleen!
That is interesting about the Callebaut. I always thought Scharffen Berger was supposed to be better. I saw the Callebaut at Surfas and I thought I’d give it a try.
My in-laws tried the brownies last night and they gave them thumbs up! My father-in-law said they were “very fudgy, very chocolatey, and moist”.
Re: coconut flour bread — I did not use an electric mixer. I also did not sift the flour like Fife recommends (laziness, and don’t own a sifter). The bread is pretty dense, kinda like a pound cake. It didn’t rise a lot for me either. I don’t think you’ll see a lot of rise with coconut flour.. I used a loaf pan which worked well. I think you have to use a loaf pan with coconut flour — I don’t think you could do it freeform.
17/12/2008 at 6:13 am Permalink
Diane,
You crack me up you funny lady! :-*
Yes they are SUPER sweet. For those of us who don’t eat a lot of sweets, maybe too sweet. For regular people who normally eat sugar daily, they are just right.
I generally think most sweets are TOO sweet. Of course, my taste buds have changed. The idea of drinking a Coke sounds nasty to me now — and I used to like soda.
Bruce Fife actually has two brownie recipes in his Cooking with Coconut Four book. One is a regular sweet version and the other is a less sweet version of the brownies. I will have to test both and see which I like better.
17/12/2008 at 6:14 am Permalink
PS: These days, my favorite part about eating brownies or cookies is the big glass of raw milk that goes with it.
17/12/2008 at 7:13 am Permalink
I’ve made a number of Bruce Fife’s coconut flour recipes using the lower sugar option (usually that is half the sugar amount, plus stevia, but most of the time I leave he stevia and it’s just perfect). I’ve even gone lower than his low sugar option, which is fine with my family, but would perhaps not go over well with others.
But that’s because I my tastebuds are so sensitive to sugar now (with my low sugar WOE) I can even taste the sugar in very fresh romaine lettuce. It’s amazing how sweet veggies taste if the tastebuds aren’t bombarded with sugar all the time. At first I thought it was because most of our produce comes forma local farm CSA box subscription and it’s so fresh compared to supermarket produce that has to be transported all over and stored in warehouses, etc., but even when I eat away from home, I can taste a faint sweetness in foods others don’t detect. Added sugar items like catsup taste ghastly, like syrup to me now.
17/12/2008 at 9:50 am Permalink
I just had another brownie. The more I eat these brownies, the more I like them. And on the third sampling, I can say that they’re not TOO sweet for me. (Although I will try making the less sweet version.)
I think what is different about the texture is they are more like a cross between fudge and brownie.
The texture is not like brownie exactly — nor is it exactly like fudge. It is somewhere in between.
Perhaps we should call them Brudge.
Or Frownies!
17/12/2008 at 11:06 am Permalink
Oh my golly, I just thought how yummy these would be with homemade raw ice cream! I’m nearly having an attack right now. Lucky Gma Nancy and Gpa Ed!!! So when do I get my invite? If I ever come out to see my sis, I’ll stop by only if you promise to make these for me!!!
How’s Kate liking daycare? She’s probably head of the social committee!
17/12/2008 at 3:20 pm Permalink
Hi! I’ve been visiting your blog for a few months now and really have enjoyed it. It’s always nice to come across someone with similar nutritional philosophies as me.
Just had to leave this comment to say:
1. I’m definitely going to have to make these brownies.
2. I think that you should re-name them “frownies.” (I laughed so hard when I read that. Ha! – and laughed again when I typed it!)
3, Keep up your wonderful posts!
Thanks,
Mandy
18/12/2008 at 4:28 am Permalink
I’ll make you brownies whenever you like and you are welcome here anytime!
Katie loves daycare, and yes, you are right — she is running the social committee! That’s our Kate!
18/12/2008 at 4:36 am Permalink
Hi, Mandy,
I’m glad you liked my joke.
Nobody laughed around here, even though I retold the joke several times.
(“Get it, frownies?!”)
Thanks for commenting — it makes me feel good to know that someone out there appreciated it!
Ann Marie
18/12/2008 at 8:39 am Permalink
They look amazing. I’m going to try coconut flour for sure. I had never even heard of it before. Lately I’ve been using a mix of nut meal and rice blend flour w/ fantastic results…
I’ve been given a Bookworm award and now I’m giving it to you. Tag–you’re it.
18/12/2008 at 1:14 pm Permalink
Well, I broke down today while at the HFS. I passed the chocolate when leaving the produce and it called my name. So without thinking twice, I grabbed enough (which I memorized!) to make the brownies! I’m going to try Dark Choc bars and less sugar, maybe even raw honey. It’s really awful that my chocolate companion is in Germany. That means I’ll have to eat them all by myself. I’ll make them for Christmas Eve dinner. Eww, and they’ll go so well with my homemade raw ice cream. Drool……..
18/12/2008 at 8:08 pm Permalink
Hahaha Diane that’s so cute that you memorized the amount!
I’m going to try this fudge next:
http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2008/12/easiest-healthiest-most-scrmptious.html
18/12/2008 at 8:08 pm Permalink
When is Becca coming home again?
19/12/2008 at 5:28 am Permalink
Becca is heading to Ethiopia in January, where they will photograph and publish a book on the extreme poverty there. She’s having the time of her life. They went to Prague for a weekend and will be going back for Christmas break.
19/12/2008 at 5:29 am Permalink
opps forgot to say, I’m not sure when she’s coming home….maybe this summer for a few months and then returning?? or trying to figure out what to do with her life.
19/12/2008 at 5:40 am Permalink
Wow that is so awesome, Diane! I hope you get to see her this summer.
08/01/2009 at 11:11 am Permalink
Is it possible to use stevia instead of the rapadura? I try to avoid sugar in all of its forms. The maple syrup is OK since the recipe doesn’t call for much.
08/01/2009 at 12:00 pm Permalink
Carla, I say why not try it! I haven’t tried baking with stevia. Maybe someone else has a better idea. What about honey? Can you use that? I think honey would work fine.
08/01/2009 at 12:07 pm Permalink
I have to avoid all of those types of sweeteners unless its in small amounts.
I have insulin resistance and even that much honey wouldn’t be good. 
08/01/2009 at 12:42 pm Permalink
Have you ever tried baking with stevia?
15/07/2009 at 6:49 pm Permalink
I have a gluten free version of brownies that uses beans, ground chia seed and sorghum flour. I’ve never seen coconut flour, but I use and recommend coconut oil as oil of choice.
Will have to source out coconut flour and make this.
looks yummy
Rob – @formerfatguy’s last blog post..Build a Bigger Chest
08/08/2010 at 3:31 am Permalink
I just made these brownies and they’re great! I used unsweetened chocolate instead of bittersweet and the sweetness was perfect! Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly (although I quartered it as there are only two of us!) You’re right, they were delicious washed down with a glass of fresh, creamy raw milk.