Kitchen Time: Black Bean Brownies

I know what you’re thinking.  BEANS in a brownie?  If you’ve never actually heard of or tried this latest craze in baking, using beans in baked goods is actually a way of making your desserts more healthy.  This particular recipe, is gluten free, and tastes, in my own opinion, pretty darn good, considering the not-so-secret ingredient.

Ingredients

1 (15.5 oz) can black beans, rinsed and drained

3 eggs

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup white sugar

1 teaspoon instant coffee (optional)

½ cup milk chocolate chips (optional)

Directions

1.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C)

2.     Lightly grease an 8x8 square baking dish

3.     Combine the black beans, eggs, oil, cocoa powder, salt, vanilla extract, sugar, and instant coffee in a blender; blend until smooth.

4.     Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish.

5.     Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top of the mixture.

6.     Bake in the preheated oven until the top is dry and the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 30 minutes.

Making these brownies is fairly simple- simply combine all the ingredients and blend together.  Oh wait, blend? Yes, blend. 

oops...

However, me, thinking I was a genius and ‘above reading directions’ didn’t read the part about blending the ingredients until after I had already begun to mix them together with a hand mixer.  And let’s just say you don’t get the same results.  Not that anything terrible happened, but the beans do not completely mix in with the rest of the batter, leaving you with large chunks.  So the blender, on a ‘batter’ setting, is crucial.  Once I realized what I’d done, I transferred the batter into the blender and after a few spins, the batter looked perfectly smooth- you would never have guessed I’d made a blunder.  No harm done.

Overall, the brownies were super easy to make, despite my own reading error.  If you’re new to the black bean brownie craze, I would definitely recommend this recipe to try it out, you never know what you may think. 

Perfectly blended batter

Do I like these brownies better than regular old plain chocolate?  Probably not.  But, you’re asking a self-proclaimed sugar freak who practically lives off of caffeine and junk food.  So while I’m completely willing to ‘health up’ a junk food to try it out, nothing will beat the original version to me.  Would I make this bean version again? Definitely.

So go ahead and try out the bean brownies.  A tip for serving it to others: don’t tell them what they’re eating.  Let them assume they’re regular brownies, and then tell them the secret.  It’s probably the only way to get a true reaction on what they think of the taste. 

If you do try out this recipe, or have tried out other recipes already, let me know what you think in the comments below!  I’d love to hear what you think about this trend in the food world!

Until next time, Happy reading AND eating!

Allison