While I love me some paleo desserts and feel they’re a great way for people with major intolerances and intestinal issues to enjoy sweets, I believe a treat is a treat paleo or not. I don’t eat refined sugar on any regular basis on principal. I don’t think we are made for that kind of sugar consumption. But neither are we made for the consumption of honey and almond-butter heavy desserts on a regular basis. In fact, I get way more gastrointestinal issues eating nuts than grains. So, having saying that, this is a treat, a lovely one you should indulge in in moderation. As with everything, I will now step off the soapbox.

This was not the first paleo brownie I ever made. The first was heavy on almond butter, which had the perfect fudgy texture, but the taste was, eh, fine; not chocolatey enough. But we ate the whole darn thing anyway and loved every second of it.

So with this batch I went very old-school-flourless-cake-style on them, and while the taste was spot freakin on, the texture wasn’t my favorite. I like a stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth brownie. This was a decadent somewhere between cake and fudge brownie; just a matter of taste.

The best thing about these is that they don’t contain too much almond butter, so if you want to make a small batch of homemade almond butter, you can. If you do want to make your own almond butter, which I always do, you can check out this awesome post on how to make raw or roasted. I always roast my almonds at 160C for 10-12 minutes before I make almond butter but raw will work here too.

These were adapted from a recipe by Clean Eating With A Dirty Mind, who is basically the queen of paleo desserts, in my humble opinion. Her recipe was for mint-chocolate brownies so I removed the mint, added some sea salt and made some tiny adjustments for this version.

I have found that the taste and texture improves ridiculously the next day. So they go from amazing to holy crap in about 8 hours sitting on the counter in an air-tight container.

Triple-Chocolate Chunk Paleo Brownies

85g dark chocolate, at least 60%
115g butter (or coconut oil)
3 eggs
1/4 cup almond butter
1/4 cup raw honey
1/4 cup maple syrup (or more honey)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup of dark chocolate, chopped into chunks

1. Preheat oven to 175C and line an 8×8 baking dish with parchment.
2. In a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water, melt together the butter and chocolate, let cool slightly.
3. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time.
4. Whisk in the almond butter, honey, maple syrup and cocoa powder.
5. Fold in the cocoa powder then the chocolate chunks.
6. Pour the batter into the baking dish and cook for 20-30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out just clean. Let cool completely before slicing. These improve dramatically the next day.