I made a batch of gluten-free and vegan blondies on Sunday using the recipe above, which I'd cut from the back of a bag of Enjoy Life–brand chocolate chunks. How old-school of me.
This recipe breaks two cardinal rules of recipe writing: One of the items in the list of ingredients, the xanthan gum, is never mentioned in the directions. And the ingredients aren't utilized in the same order in which they appear in the list: The first ingredient mentioned in the directions (the flax gel) is the last one in the list, the second ingredient (the vanilla extract) is eighth in the list, and the third ingredient (the oil) is sixth. No one with a clue about editing recipes read this puppy before it was printed.
Those problems have thankfully been corrected in the version of the recipe found on the Enjoy Life website.
My blondies didn't puff up that much and were too moist for me to consider them to be an overall success. But they tasted yummy.
At first, I thought the volume of flax gel, which is a vegan replacement for the eggs you'd typically find in blondies, seemed big compared with what I often see in similar recipes. But when I just now searched for "flax egg" online, I found many sources calling for 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed mixed into 2, 2 1/2, or 3 tablespoons of warm water. And since 1/3 cup = 5.333 tablespoons, the recipe is really calling for an amount of flax gel equivalent to about two flax eggs, which is certainly reasonable.
I should point out that I used not particularly finely ground flaxseed meal from Bob's Red Mill; further grinding the meal would probably have helped the texture. Actually, after reading this post at Bonzai Aphrodite, I've convinced myself I should be grinding whole flaxseeds instead of buying the meal—to ensure freshness—and refrigerating the flax egg (with a 1:3 ratio of ground seeds to water) for about an hour to ensure it has the right consistency. My flax eggs have never gotten all that sticky even when I've made them 15 minutes or more prior to incorporating them into a batter.
Two more notes on vegan eggs before I go:
This Food.com recipe calls for simmering(!) the ground flaxseeds in water.
The vegan baker whose recipes I make the most, Erin McKenna, skips the "egg"-making process altogether; in her three books, all of which I own, she has you simply mixing the flaxseed meal in with your other dry ingredients and letting the heat of the oven magically transform the batter into a cohesive product. Today, I'm going to make a double batch of her Chips Ahoy!–like chocolate chip cookies, the recipe for which appears in BabyCakes Covers the Classics, and mail them off tomorrow to my nephews, who are beginning their second year of college this month and whose birthday is this Saturday.
An UPDATE that night:
I made a batch and a half of the chocolate chip cookies this afternoon and will get them (minus a reasonable amount for Uncle Tony and me to enjoy 😄) in the mail to Matt and Mike in the morning from the closest post office to me, which, by the way, is in a mall. Specifically, Coral Ridge Mall, "where shopping is a breeze."
Here are the finished cookies, nestled in parchment paper:
The cookies contain Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Oat Flour, which lends them a pleasingly earthy, one might almost—almost—say healthy, texture. The recipe also calls for a slightly lesser amount of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour, but I substitute, at Erin McKenna's suggestion, a mix of brown rice flour, potato starch, and arrowroot, because BRMAPGFBF consists mostly of garbanzo bean flour (and also includes a bit of fava bean flour) and Tony's digestive system is better off when he avoids legumes, in addition to gluten and dairy.