Chocolate Bliss Brownies (Grain Free) + The Power of PLEASURE

Plus Super Bowl favorites

Feb 10, 2023

Today I have a new brownie recipe for you, and these babes are my current love (sorry, James!). They’re made with melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder, giving them a rich flavor, and they’re bound with just almond flour, making them ultra moist and tender (and grain-free). They’d be perfect for Valentine’s Day or a Super Bowl party. Nibbling on one is a sigh-worthy act, which gets me to today’s essay. Let’s talk about pleasure.

Sensuality

My family and I went to the south of France for 10 days over the summer, a dream vacation that I’ve been planning since I last visited twenty years ago (I studied abroad there in college). The trip got me thinking about sensuality, a topic I posted about on Instagram and wanted to revisit here. Sensuality is defined as: “the enjoyment, expression or pursuit of physical pleasure.”

Pleasure

Everywhere I looked in France, sensuality was seemingly celebrated. Most women went topless on the beach regardless of whether they were young and lithe, or old and wrinkled (I was never brave enough!). At first this was a bit shocking to my American perspective. My worldview of “going topless” meant you were doing it for the gaze of somebody else (remember all those movies in the ’80’s where teenage boys would ogle at boobs? - there was zero ogling in France, at least that was apparent). Those women were so confident in their skin, regardless of their physical appearance. After a few days I realized that they weren’t taking their tops off for others, but for their own sheer pleasure of feeling the sun and water on their bodies.

Food is also regarded as a sensual pleasure in France in a way that feels very different from here in the U.S. Taking time to enjoy a long, beautifully prepared meal is a deeply engrained part of the cultural value system. Of course, this a vast generalization, and I’m sure there are absolutely subsets of the culture for whom this does not apply, as there are surely plenty of French women who would never take their top off at the beach.

Shame

However, it got me thinking about my own views of sensuality. For much of my life, sensuality was tied much more strongly to shame than to pleasure. Like many women I know, I learned early on to be ashamed of my body (which you can learn more about in this podcast episode). The influence of diet culture slowly turned food from one of my greatest sources of joy as a child into a source of deep anxiety and stress as a young adult.

But this goes even deeper. We live in a culture built upon puritanical roots, where sensuality and pleasure aren’t part of the social value system. While the enjoyment of physical pleasure is deemed acceptable for people in positions of power (traditionally white men), it’s viewed as distasteful or shameful for all others, including women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, people in bigger bodies, and all marginalized groups.

It’s all about perspective

And yet, this is all perspective—these are simply beliefs created and perpetuated by the cultural landscapes we grow up in. They’re illusions. What if we were to switch the lens? What if we believed that these bodies we’ve been given for our short stint here are earth are designed to feel pleasure and joy—that physical pleasure and enjoyment are our birthrights, and that they bring us closer to the Divine, however you define that for yourself?

This isn’t to ignore the real structures of oppression and violence that make pleasure hard to grasp (if you’re struggling to even survive, how can you prioritize pleasure?), or to say that you won’t experience periods of profound grief in your life (we all will). But it is to say that by reclaiming our sensuality, we also begin to reclaim our bodies, subverting systems that have historically tried to control us based on gender, sexual orientation, body shape, skin color and more. In other words, celebrating our sensuality helps us to regain our sovereignty and joy as both humans and as eaters.

We can start this in the smallest of ways. As my wise friend @msteinmarrison commented in that Instagram post I mentioned:

“[A way to work on this] is to actively notice and enjoy everyday sensual pleasures—a light breeze on bare skin, the warmth of sunshine, the taste of a ripe peach, the comfort of a hug. I am alive, and my body allows me to have and ENJOY these experiences, if I pay attention and give myself permission to do so.”

Perhaps nibbling on a luscious chocolate brownie—allowing yourself to embrace the full bliss of the moment—can be a good place to start.

Chocolate bliss brownies

If you’re a chocolate lover, these brownies are for you. They’re deliciously rich and fudgy with a crackly top. Instead of using cocoa powder, they get their flavor from dark chocolate (I prefer to use a bar with 55-60% cacao content, as I’ve found it provides the best balance). The brownies are also grain-free and are naturally sweetened with coconut sugar (in addition to the chocolate).

Process shots showing how to make grain free brownies.

They’re delicious all on their own, or you can top them with ice cream (it’s one of my favorite desserts of all time ❤️). They’d be lovely for Valentine’s Day or for the Super Bowl this weekend, but perhaps you want to make them for your own divine, sensual pleasure.

You can download the full printable recipe below (and I’ve included jpeg images of the recipe at the bottom of this page). Also, scroll down to get more chocolate desserts to swoon over, and here are my make-ahead Super Bowl favorites.