This recipe was heavily inspired by The Minimalist Baker.
- 1 3/4 cups cooked black beans (that’s 3/4 cup dry or 1 15 oz. can)
- 2 flax eggs (described below)
- 3 T (45 g) aquafaba (as a substitute for oil)
- 3/4 cup (72 g) cocoa powder
- 1/4 tsp iodized salt
- 1 T vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup (100 g) cane sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- Optionally, you could add 1/2 c. crushed walnuts, pecans, hazelnut or any other kind of nut you like OR mix 4 T of peanut or other nut butter into the brownie mix
- Preheat oven to 350 F/176 C.
- To make the flax eggs, combine 2 T (16 g) flaxseed, ground, with 6 T (90 ml) of water and let sit for about 5 minutes.
- Then, combine everything in a food processor, if you have one, and puree. I don’t have one, so I mashed the beans by hand and then used a hand mixer to combine all the ingredients. They came out just fine. If you use a food processor, then add the nuts in last and mix them in by hand, or just sprinkle them on top of the brownies after step 4.
- Add mix to silicone 6-muffin tray (no greasing required).
- Bake for 25 minutes, check that the brownies have started to come away from the sides of the tray, and add 5 more minutes if necessary.
Each brownie has about 1/3 c. beans. One serving of beans is 1/2 c. So, if you eat 3 brownies, you’ve gotten 2 out of your recommended 3 servings of beans and your daily servings of flaxseed and nuts! Not bad, eh?
Now imagine some banana ice dream on top of your hot black bean brownies! You could skip dinner entirely and just have dessert, still fulfilling a whopping 8 out of 18 servings: 2 beans, berries, 3 fruit, flaxseeds, and nuts! Sounds like a fun Saturday night if you can manage to eat it all!
Just keep in mind, it’s a lot of sugar, so this should be a special treat – not how you get your beans every day. (I know, I’m no fun!)
Eat like every bite counts 