Vegan brownies

I made these brownies for my colleagues at work. They liked them very much and one of them who is a chocoholic just loved it....I adapted this recipe from allrecipes and made some changes to the original recipe based on one of the review comments.
Everince I started baking vegan foods, I stopped buying/using dairy products like butter, ghee and cheese. But there are still some non vegan items like dark chocolate, choco chips etc in my pantry which I bought before going vegan. I don't feel like throwing them away, so I use them whenever I get a chance. So in this recipe, I used some choco chips.
Here is the recipe as adapted from allrecipes and one of the review comments

Ingredients to make around 20 pieces
All Purpose flour: 1 cup
Granulated white sugar: 3/4 cup
Cocoa Powder: 6 tbsp
Baking powder: ½ tsp
Salt: 1/4 tsp
Water: ½ cup
Vegetable oil: 2 tbsp(I used sunflower refined oil) 
Unsweetened applesauce: ½ cup 
Vanilla essence: 1 tsp
chocolate chips: a handful(Optional)

Procedure
1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. 
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder in a large bowl.
3. Mix in sugar.
4. Pour in water, oil, applesauce and vanilla and mix until well blended.(I did the mixing with hand)
5. If using choco chip, pour half the batter in the greased or parchment lined pan, put in a layer of chocolate chips, and then pour in the rest of the batter, spreading to cover the chips. If not using choco chips, then pour in the batter to the pan.
6. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.
7. Allow it to cool for sometime before cutting into squares.