Ritual Cacao, Miso & Buckwheat Brownies

Now that the kids are on school holidays, this is the perfect sweet treat for the whole family: a delicious, nutritious brownie. As Georgie Soskin, the recipe’s creator, puts it:

I love a brownie but it has to be good. Not a semi-virtuous, sad little square that tastes like an apology. A proper one: dense, fudgy, and dark enough that one small piece is genuinely enough.

Because eating healthily doesn’t have to be boring, Soskin, a holistic chef and founder of Conscious Cooking, always boosts everything she eats.

Every meal is a chance to add as much goodness into my body as possible, but it has to taste good; otherwise what’s the point? I take a traditional recipe, like a brownie, and uplift it.

Ingredients

140g butter
140g dark chocolate
40g ritual cacao (or any pure cacao)
170g light brown muscovado sugar
2 tsp vanilla paste
3 eggs
85g buckwheat flour
1 tbsp miso paste
15g chia seeds
1 tbsp black sesame tahini paste

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a tin with non-stick baking paper.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, stir in the miso, tahini, vanilla and sugar.

Let the mixture cool slightly, then whisk in the eggs for a couple of minutes, until it lightens.

Stir through the buckwheat flour and chia seeds, folding gently to combine.

Pour into the tin and bake for 10-12 minutes, until just set, with a thin crackled film across the top.

Cool on a wire rack before cutting. Keep the squares small and dense, this mix makes at least 16.

Georgie’s notes

On the miso: baking means the live probiotic cultures won’t survive the oven, but fermentation leaves behind postbiotics too, the metabolites, peptides and cell components made during fermentation, which research suggests can still support gut and immune health even without live bacteria. So this is here for flavour and depth first, with a postbiotic bonus.
On the cacao: ritual-grade cacao keeps more of its natural bitterness and polyphenol content than standard cocoa powder, which is part of why it tastes so different here.
On the buckwheat: despite the name, buckwheat is a gluten-free seed, not a relative of wheat, so this bake is naturally wheat-free. For a strict gluten-free claim, check the label on your miso and chocolate; some brands use barley.
On the chia: a fold-through boost of fibre and plant omega-3.