Enjoy rainy days with gluten-free brownies

Are you as surprised by the late-May rain showers as I am? Are we even still in Southern California? The rain has been a pleasant anomaly as springtime winds down in our corner of the world.

Freeway drives right now are filled with nature’s eye candy: green hillsides and mountains, yellow and purple wildflowers and white, cottony clouds in a blue sky. Our SoCal landscape now is pretty enough to be a lockscreen photo on your phone. A little rain makes a big difference.

When I was in Kauai earlier this spring, I learned that Mount Waialeale is one of the wettest spots on earth. It averages 9,763 millimeters of rain each year. For non-metric peeps, that’s around 384 inches. By contrast, Canyon Lake averages 304 millimeters annually, or 12 inches of rain. So far, we are just shy of seven inches this year.

Rainy weather seems to bring out the urge to bake in most folks, me included. Brownies are a family favorite and I have a go-to recipe that I’ve used for years. But I recently stumbled upon a brownie recipe that didn’t use any kind of flour or any vanilla extract.

So, what’s the problem with vanilla extract? Everyone loves vanilla, right? Yes, and that’s part of the problem. The price of vanilla extract has gone through the roof and up into the white, cottony clouds of the blue sky.

The crazy price increase of vanilla is a result of several factors. Labor intensive pollination, five years development time of seed pods, small crop yields, increased demand and volatile weather in Madagascar where the majority of vanilla orchids are grown all add up to a worldwide shortage. I’ve gotten by with substitutes like Rodelle’s Baker’s Extract, which I found at Costco.

This week’s recipe is by American cookbook author David Lebovitz, who has lived in Paris for over a decade. His website, davidlebovitz.com, is chock full of great recipes. In case you were wondering, Paris gets double the rain we do, meaning 25 inches of rain annually.

I made two batches of the brownies, one plain and one with toasted, chopped hazelnuts, and they were both amazingly good. This has become my favorite brownie recipe of all time and one that I will make rain or shine.

Photo by Betty Williams

Gluten-Free Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons (85g) butter, salted or unsalted
• 8 ounces (225g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chopped
• 3/4 cup (150g) sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder, natural or Dutch process
• 3 tablespoons (30g) corn starch
• 1 cup (135g) nuts toasted and coarsely chopped, optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line an 8-inch square pan with aluminum foil, making sure the foil goes up and over the sides to create an overhang. This will help easily remove brownies later. Lightly spray the foil with non-stick spray oil. Set pan aside.

On the stove top, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. When it is almost melted, add the chocolate and stir constantly until butter and chocolate are smooth. Remove from the stove and add the sugar. Stir well, then add the eggs, one at a time, stirring after each addition.

In a bowl, sift together the cocoa powder and cornstarch. Stir the cocoa mixture into the batter and stir like mad for one or two minutes. Don’t skip this step! The batter should not be grainy; it should be nearly smooth and pull away from the sides of the pan. At this point, you can mix in the nuts.

Pour the batter into the foil-lined pan, scraping sides of the saucepan to get it all. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until just set in the middle. Don’t overbake. Remove and let cool 10 minutes. Using the long sides of foil overhang, gently lift brownies out of the pan and let cool completely on a wire rack before slicing. Brownies can be stored at room temperature for four days (they will most likely be completely gone before day two, just so you know) or frozen for one month.