I’ve been working on a recipe for a Vegan Low Carb Peanut Butter Brownie Mug for a little while now and I’m SO excited that I finally have one!
I love a brownie mug as they’re so easy and quick to make and are such a good little dessert for those post dinner sweet tooth cravings. 

However they are generally loaded with sugar and carbs. But not this recipe! Sure, it still does have carbs but considerably lower than what you’d expect from a dessert or a standard brownie mug made from sugar and white flour. If this were a normal brownie mug made from sugar and white flour it would have around 46 grams of carbohydrates per serve, but as this recipe uses coconut flour and sweetener it only has 12.3 grams of carbs per serve, that’s a huge difference!

And not only is this dessert much lower in carbs than its counterpart, it’s also vegan, gluten-free and keto friendly! 

The coconut flour used in this recipe provides a slightly different texture than a normal cake. It’s lighter and fluffier, less dry, a bit less structured and I guess sort of more like a brownie than a cake. The coconut flour provides a faint coconutty flavour and a touch of sweetness which actually goes really well with all the other ingredients. 

So, what is a brownie mug??

It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like! A sort of brownie/cake in a mug. You simply mix all of the ingredients together in a normal mug, pop it into the microwave for 1-2 minutes and then you end up with a cooked brownie in a mug. It’s single serve and ready to eat straight out of the mug!

Why coconut flour?

Firstly, what is coconut flour?

It’s dried coconut meat, which is often leftover from producing coconut milk, which is dried at a low temperature and then ground down into a fine flour-like texture. For more information on coconut flour including benefits and how to incorporate it into your baking, see here 

As mentioned above coconut flour is much lower in carbohydrates than wheat flour. 

It’s also high in protein and fibre and naturally gluten-free, plus if you’re allergic to tree nuts coconut flour won’t be a problem for you. 

Oh and a heads up, due to the high protein and fat content, coconut flour is a lot more filling than a lot of other types of flour. I was experimenting making these in the middle of the day and I made one once before lunch but then was way too full to even eat a proper lunch, even a few hours later. 

Something like almond flour is more commonly used for lower carb and gluten-free baked goods, and I did very briefly consider using that. The reason I didn’t though was because as I mentioned, those with a tree nut allergy wouldn’t be able to eat a brownie mug made with almond flour, and also almond flour is not cheap. It’s around $13 for 500g, often more, whereas I paid $4.50 for 800g of coconut flour. A much better price. 

Now I did also try this recipe with hemp seed flour and a mix of hemp seed flour and coconut flour and it sort of worked but didn’t have a very nice texture. The hemp seed flour gave the brownie mug a sort of unpleasant gritty texture. Hence why I flagged that idea and went for just coconut flour instead.

Coconut flour is actually super easy to find, I just found it at my local supermarket and as I said it was quite a good price at $4.50 for 800g. I didn’t get a fancy brand either, just the supermarket’s own brand – Pam’s Organic Coconut Flour.

Can I swap out the coconut flour for another type of flour?

The simple answer, unfortunately, is no. I have found pretty much all flours to work very differently in baking and you won’t be able to swap out one directly for another. For example, coconut flour absorbs a lot of water so I’ve used more liquid in this recipe and less flour than I would have if I was using, say wheat flour. 

But the good news, as above coconut flour is relatively easy to find and inexpensive and has lots of health benefits!

Do I need a particular type of mug?

You’ll want just a standard sized coffee mug, and one which is microwave safe. 

No little teacups, and no oversized mugs, just the most standard size you’ve got. If you use something which is much bigger or smaller the results, particularly in relation to cook time, will most likely vary and your brownie mug might turn out quite differently to mine and how I intended the recipe to work. 

Also worth noting is that because of the use of coconut flour, this brownie actually expands and puffs up a lot more and a lot quicker than if you were to use regular wheat flour (another reason not to go using a tiny mug!). You’ll note in the instructions that you will probably need to stop in the middle of cooking a couple of times before continuing on so your brownie doesn’t overflow out the top of your mug, and also keep a close eye on it while it’s in the microwave. 

Now that I’ve created a vegan low carb peanut butter brownie mug, I’m super excited to start playing around with some other flavours too! So expect to see some of those in future. 

If, like myself, you are peanut butter obsessed I recommend you have a go at some of my other recipes which feature peanut butter as the star like my peanut butter cups or peanut butter cookies.