Almond Awesome Brownies

I found a recipient for regular brownies in a cookbook, then changed everything around to suit my tastes. 

I wanted to use almond flour, but I didn't have any, so I made my own using roasted plain almonds I had saved in the freezer. I think the container I had was a pound (but I'm not swearing to it, so buy extra and freeze what you don't use.) I put them into the food processor and whirred them into a mixture of a course grind and a medium grind. I wanted a slight crunch from the nuts, but I'm not a fan of huge pieces of nuts in my brownies. I'm very much a texture girl, and consistence is a big deal for me. The only thing really crunchy I want in my brownie is the crunchy chocolatey edges.

After I had the course ground almond flour in the mixture, I wanted/needed more flour, so I put the remaining half of the almonds back into the food processor, and let it go until it was almost almond butter. I saved my leftover flour in the fridge in a plastic resealable container.

In deciding which brownies to make, I had thought of making a peanut butter swirl, so if I had gone too far with grinding my almonds, I would have had almond butter, so I would have just added that and made an almond butter swirl brownie. 

But I stopped it just short, and had beautiful fine ground almond flour.

This is all important, because y'all know I don't measure. I try sometimes, but then I do what I want and what I think will work. For instance, I added more total flour than the original recipe called for. I added double vanilla because I LOVE the good stuff. I added double the salt because I love sweet and salty. The recipe below is what I used. If you don't like sweet and salty together, only use half of the salt listed. But these were seriously incredibly tasty. 

So... Here goes...

1 C sugar (I'm going to use coconut crystals or dates next time)

1/2 C coconut oil

2 teaspoons VERY GOOD vanilla extract

2 eggs

2/3 C course/medium grind almond flour

1/3 to 1/2 C fine ground almond flour (reserved)

3/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or other large granule salt

Heat oven to 350

Grease a square 8x8 or 9x9 with coconut oil.

Mix sugar, coconut oil, vanilla, and eggs in a bowl big enough to mix it all in. (I used a wooden spoon, didn't need a mixer.)

Stir in the course/medium almond flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. 

Add enough of the fine ground almond flour to make a thick, dough type "batter"

Spread the batter in the pan evenly.

Bake 20-30 minutes, or until toothpick in center comes out without liquid chocolate on it. You don't want it "clean", because they'll be dry, but you'll want to make sure they're done.

Cut into 16 squares, and enjoy. Or hide them from everyone, and gobble them all up yourself.