This post may include affiliate links; see our disclosure policy.
This brownie pie recipe is fudgy and decadent, with a salted tahini maple sauce that puts it over the top! Add it to your repertoire of delicious gluten free desserts.
Fudgy flourless brownie pie…need we say more? This decadent chocolate dessert recipe is from the book Black Girl Baking by Jerrelle Guy, creator of Chocolate for Basil. It’s quickly becoming one of our favorite baking cookbooks. Instead of judging a book by its cover, Alex and I judge a cookbook by how many recipes we immediately want to try while paging through it. And after just a few pages in, our list of must makes was growing buy the minute!
Blue Blueberry Drop Biscuits, Everything Chickpea Turmeric Crackers, Macadamia Brown Butter Cashew Cookie Dough…the recipes are inventive and the photography is outstanding. But more importantly, this is a special book because it’s not just a baking cookbook. Author Jerrelle Guy has included deeper themes that go way beyond baking. Keep reading for a special interview with Jerrelle and the brownie pie recipe!
An interview with the author, Jerrelle Guy
1) You are an accomplished cook as well as a baker. What is it about baking that made you want to write an entire book of baked recipes?
This book is less about baking and more about self-expression and crediting the process (toward loving ourselves as we are). Food and cooking are political and offer up a lot of information about our identities and family histories. I used baking, something that feels more universal because of the simple flour-butter-eggs-sugar template, and then attempted to play around with those ingredients–adding, substituting. In that playing process, using my hands and revisiting my memories, I revealed a lot about my own personal story, but hopefully showed how food and ingredients and the process of recipe creating can be very revealing about where you are on your journey, where you’ve been and who influenced you the most. I want to encourage people to get into the kitchen and play, and share whatever they find proudly.
2) You’ve said your recipes are “a mishmash of my life: my black roots, Chamorro food, the Caribbean islands that were my neighbors.” Are there a specific few recipes that speak to that fusion?
In the book definitely The Papaya Pastries, The Jamaican Patty Pot Pies, The Bananas Foster Lumpia—and I try to explain how I merged them all during the recipe development stage in the recipe intros.
3) Your book cover says that growing up as a sensitive child in a race conscious space, you’d rather spend time eating cookies than taking on the weight of worldly issues. It helped you see that “good food is the most powerful way to connect, understand and heal.” What is it about food that does this?
Anytime there is food involved in a social setting it makes walls drop and boundaries dissolve, because we all eat, and often times you can find more commonalities in our rituals and comfort foods than you can find differences. I organized the book by the senses to speak to this. Beyond identifying with a recipe’s name or photo, you might be able to identify with a specific texture or smell that immediately brings you back to your childhood and a feeling of being at home and safe.
4) You attended the Gastronomy program at Boston University: why did you decide to go, and what’s a major theme you’ve learned?
Gastronomy is essentially Food Studies. I decided to go because I wanted to understand the depth of the work I was doing and I wanted to understand myself better and why my connection to food has always been so strong. I focused on African American Foodways, and something I learned was the lack of black representation in American food, and in the food world in general despite the major contributions black hands have made. It was a big reason for titling the book what I titled it.
All about this brownie pie recipe!
This brownie pie recipe has simple ingredients and some standard baking techniques: creaming together butter and sugar, using a double boiler to melt chocolate, and whipping egg whites to fold gently into the batter. If you’re not a baker follow the instructions carefully: if you bake regularly this will be second nature.
This brownie pie recipe also uses espresso powder, which is a baking trick to make the chocolate flavor pop. We’d recommend finding some if you can (ours was DeLallo brand!). Also, if you substitute coconut oil for the butter, which we tried; you may need to lessen the baking time a bit (45 minutes was a hair too long in our oven!). Next time we’ll try it with butter since we aren’t dairy free ourselves: the texture would be even more fudgy!
The crown jewel in this brownie pie recipe is the tahini maple sauce! It’s super simple to whip up: just mix together tahini, maple, espresso powder, and salt and it comes together into a gooey, salty sweet drizzle. It’s the absolute perfect finish for this brownie pie. And if you’re up for a decadent treat, top this brownie pie with our Homemade Whipped Cream or Yogurt Whipped Cream!
Related: What is Tahini?
Get the book!
Get Black Girl Baking by Jerrelle Guy here!
Looking for more gluten free desserts?
This brownie pie recipe is one of our favorite gluten free desserts; here are a few more from A Couple Cooks!
- Dark Chocolate Tahini No Bake Cookies
- Easy Blueberry Crisp
- Triple Cherry Cheesecake
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Amazing Gluten Free Chocolate Cake
- Bliss Bites (Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies)
- Easy Bananas Foster
- Perfect Homemade Peanut Butter Cups
- Related: 10 Romantic Dinner Recipes
This brownie pie recipe is…
Grain free, Paleo, gluten free, and vegetarian. For dairy free, use the coconut oil sub.
Fudgy Flourless Brownie Pie
This brownie pie recipe is fudgy and decadent, with a salted tahini maple sauce that puts it over the top! Add it to your repertoire of delicious gluten free desserts.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
For the brownie pie
- ¾ cup cocoa powder, sifted
- 1 teaspoon espresso powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 13 tablespoons softened unsalted butter or coconut oil, divided
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 4 eggs, at room temperature
For the tahini maple spread
- ¼ cup tahini
- ¼ cup grade A maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon espresso powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 357F (190C) and have an oiled 9-inch (23 cm) springform pan or cake pan nearby.
- To make the brownie pie, sift the cocoa powder, espresso, baking soda and salt into a bowl and set aside. In the microwave or over a double boiler, melt the chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons of the butter, stirring until the chocolate comes together into a thick fudge. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
- In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or with an electric mixer, cream together the sugar, vanilla, and remaining 11 tablespoons of butter until pale, scraping down the sides of the bowl and the beater as you go. Separate 3 of the eggs and add the egg yolks, one at a time, waiting until they are fully incorporate before adding another yolk (save the whites for Step 5). Then add 1 whole egg and mix to combine.
- Add 1 tablespoon of the cooled chocolate butter mixture at a time, continuing to beat after each addition until fully incorporated. Mix in the dry ingredients, beating until just combined.
- In a separate clean metal bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, about 5 minutes. Make sure no bites of egg yolk sneak into the bowl, or the fat in the yolk won’t allow the whites to lift while beating. Add the whipped egg whites to the batter in 3 additions, folding gently to keep the air in the whites from deflating. Once it’s mostly combined (a few streaks of white is okay), pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake the brownie pie for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the crust gets shiny and cracks, and a toothpick inserted into one of the cracks comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly.
- To make the tahini spread, combine the tahini, maple syrup, espresso powder, salt and vanilla in a blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth and creamy and almost all the granules of espresso are no longer visible. Serve alongside a slice of the brownie pie.
Notes
Reprinted with permission from Black Girl Baking by Jerrelle Guy
