NoShu 99% Sugar Free Chocolate Brownie Mix

I first discovered NoShu a few weeks ago when I was ordering my weekly grocery shop online. My local supermarket is quite small and doesn’t have a huge range of vegan products (hence the online shop at a different supermarket) so I put the words  “sugar free” into the search bar hoping to find something I hadn’t yet come across. Multiple NoShu products loaded on my screen. There were a couple of different baking mixes as well as chocolate chips. I assumed none of these products would be vegan, but when I looked at the baking mixes it said there was a vegan option. Pretty excited to find a sugar free baking mix which could be made vegan, I added the brownie mix to my shopping cart.

A little background on NoShu. They are an Australian owned company who specialise in sugar-free food. Their range includes baking mixes – brownies, cakes, cookies and cupcakes. They also make chocolate chips and ready-made slices, bars, cakes and donuts. Although being in New Zealand I haven’t seen a lot of their products here (yet). 

Unlike a lot of other brands their products, baking mixes included don’t even include natural sugars which is awesome if you’re diabetic, especially type 2. 

When my Sugar Free Chocolate Brownie Mix arrived my first thoughts when I saw it were that I really like the packaging and branding. It comes in a box which has really nice bright colours – pink, purple and white. It looks clean, neat and is really easy to read. The instructions are very clearly laid out on the back, with nutritional information and ingredients on the side of the box. There’s just one thing I don’t like about the box. And that’s that it’s really not obvious that this brownie mix can be made vegan, even though when I purchased it online it clearly said it could. In fact the only clue it can be made without egg is very small on the side of the box underneath all the nutritional information, ingredients and allergens it says “Note: Powdered egg replacer is not recommended for this baking mix. Please see our website for egg free recipe options”. The website url can be found on the back of the box.

I head to the website to find out what egg replacer recipe I should use. Once I get to the url I have no idea where to find this egg replacement recipe. There are recipes on the website, but all are full recipes, not just an egg replacement. You have to scroll through all of these recipes until you eventually find one called “99% Sugar Free Vegan Friendly Brownie”, it’s literally about 4-5 pages you need to scroll through. Honestly, this is just a bit ridiculous. It’s time consuming and frustrating. When the box directed me to their website for the vegan alternative I expected it to be a lot more logical. However now that you, my readers, know what to look for, you should be able to search that recipe title in the search bar. 

Now that I have found the vegan version, I notice the recipe isn’t quite the same as the box. I assumed it would be the same, but with a vegan non-egg egg. But nope. The recipe asks for the box mix as well as either black beans or chia seeds (there are 2 different egg-replacement recipes), water, baking powder and oil. Yes if you just use the box you do also need a couple of extra ingredients from your pantry – Oil, and egg and water. The difference though is that to make the vegan version, the quantities of these additional ingredients actually differ slightly to what is on the box. You also need to add your own baking powder which seems really strange. I don’t know why baking powder wouldn’t be included in dry box mix, or why you would only need it if you aren’t using egg. Having a different recipe for the vegan version to what is on the box, also means I can’t use the recipe on the box, so there goes that convenience. I instead have to pull the recipe up on my phone. Not ideal. 

Anyway, let’s move onto the ingredients. It says on the box that these brownies are 99% sugar free, gluten free, use natural sweeteners and have only 5g of carbohydrates per serve. But is all of that as good as it sounds?

After having a look at the ingredients and the nutritional information, yes, it actually is as good as it sounds. Ingredients are gluten free and grain free flour (a mix of chickpea flour, tapioca starch, faba bean flour, bicarbonate soda and guar gum), corn flour, erythritol, cocoa powder, natural flavours and stevia. That’s all things that pretty well make sense to me. Nothing strange, no weird numbers or artificial colours or flavours. Awesome. 

I think it’s time to get this brownie mix out of the box and actually make it and see what the finished brownie is like. The box instructions are super easy. Like I said if you’re making the vegan version it’s pretty annoying having to find the recipe and then use the recipe which is on the website rather than the one which is on the box. BUT the recipe itself is actually super easy. You just put everything together in a bowl and mix it all together. Then it goes into a 20x20cm tin to bake for 30-35 minutes at 160℃ fan forced. The back of the box includes baking tips for if you’re using a tin which is either smaller or larger than the recommended 20x20cm. A nice little touch as a lot of people probably don’t have the right size. 

Now comes the best part – tasting! Once It’s been cooling in the tin for about an hour I take it out and slice into squares. The texture feels sort of hard and crunchy (in a good way) on the top and quite soft in the middle. As soon as I lift a brownie up I notice it’s really flat, no rise to it at all. Not a fan of this. However the flavour is quite good – chocolatey and rich and not overly sweet. But then comes the stickiness. It sticks to my teeth. It’s not a nice feeling and it’s annoying and kind of gross. 

So, overall, what did I think?

This brownie mix is really great if you need a sweet treat which is going to cater to a lot of different dietary requirements. It’s so easy to make (especially if you aren’t making it vegan) and it’s not badly priced at $7.99 NZD. I like that it is actually 99% sugar free and doesn’t even use natural sugars. I also like that the ingredients are all ingredients which are familiar and nothing artificial. 

What I didn’t like was having to search for the vegan alternative recipe, then actually following a different recipe. I didn’t like that it came out flat and had a sticky texture but I did enjoy the flavour.

I’m not huge on box mixes to start with but I think it’s possible I would buy this again. If I’m short on time and need something to bring to an event where I want those with gluten or nut allergies, as well as vegans or diabetics to have something they can all eat. It’s definitely ideal for those sorts of times. I’m also interested to try their other products, well at least the ones which are available in New Zealand!