Vegan Salted Miso Brownies | Meera Sodha (East)

Continuing my devotion to Meera Sodha’s The New Vegan column in the Guardian, I have just finished eating my third batch of the salted miso brownies that were posted a while back.  Brownies are a contentious item – the debates about cakey vs fudgey are unending.  My perfect brownie is firmly in the fudgey camp, but with a crisp meringue-like top.  Sadly, I haven’t been able to get that crispness in a vegan recipe (…yet) so it makes sense then to boost the flavour profile.  

White miso is one of those perishable ingredients that you buy for one recipe then forget about it at the back of the fridge, so I’m always happy to see a recipe to use it.  Meera, to her credit, includes it in lots of her New Vegan recipes so it rarely goes to waste these days.  White miso in a brownie though?  It is definitely the sweeter end of the miso spectrum but it is definitely savoury.  Luckily it has a whopping amount of sugar to balance.  An obscene 420g to be precise… plus the sugar in the 250g of dark chocolate.  Healthy, these salted miso brownies ain’t.  

First attempt, the only ingredient I didn’t have in for this recipe was the milled chia seeds.  I did try and mill my regular chia seeds in my mini blender, but they’re too small, so just spun around untouched by the blades.  I added whole chia seeds which I think added a pleasing crunch.  Second attempt, I was prepared and bought the milled chia seeds – but bought the wrong sugar.  Dark and not light muscovado.  I compromised and used a 1/3 caster to lighten it a bit.  With the milled chia seeds, these brownies are definitely fudgey – dare I say an almost perfect consistency, but without that perfect crisp top. 

These vegan brownies have been deployed on confirmed carnivores who were pleasantly surprised and “would eat again”.  Praise indeed.  

The recipe is, as usual, available on the Guardian website. The recipe can also be found in East