Vegan Oatmeal Brownies

In a quest to completely replace refined flour and gluten flours in my recipes, I blindly replaced all of the whole wheat flour (that was recommended) with oats flour. It surprisingly turned out well, though a bit on the dry side and not as fudgy as expected. So it is more cakey. Brownies are usually flattish and cut into squares or rectangles. I didn't have a large square baking pan, so I used my heart shaped cake baking pan. That's why it didn't turn out like a sheet cake as brownies usually are. Coffeeshop menu's have brownies with vanilla ice-cream which is a great combination! :-)

The raw materials for the unusual brownie are..

The dry ingredients..

Oats flour - 1 and 1/2 cup

Cocoa powder - 1/2 cup

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Salt - 1/2 tsp

Wet ingredients..

Milk - 3/4 cup

Organic jaggery powder - 1 and 1/2 cup

Vanilla extract - 1 tsp

Combine dry and wet ingredients separately. Add dry into wet bowl in batches, until the flour is mixed well.

Pour batter into a baking tin lined with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180C. Bake for 45 minutes. After the first 25 minutes, lightly tent the baking dish with tin foil so that the top doesn't burn.

After 45 minutes, take brownies out and allow to cool. Cut into slices and serve.

They were a relish with a cup of cardamom tea, while reading "When you disappeared". It's a story about Simon and Catherine, who have three children. One fine day, Simon decides he cannot take life anymore and just disappears. Catherine has no clue as to where and why, and think he is dead. The story then shifts to twenty five years later, when Simon pays a visit to Catherine. They both take turns to tell their story of how they spend the twenty five years. In those years, there are deaths, miscarriages, murders, cancer, travel, love and a lot of loathing. 

As this is my third John Marrs novel, some of the ending was predictable, though I didn't expect the reason Simon left home to be completely a misunderstanding between the couple. That misgiving felt unforgivable, given the lifetime that Simon and Catherine lost together. I had to spend a few minutes assimilating that at the end of the book.