Another Use for Black Beans

I felt like experimenting this week and Heidi sent me the perfect recipe for that desire. She participated in Bake 350 Flavor of the Month and this was a recipe from that event. I wanted to make it and see if Mike could guess the secret ingredient but he saw the recipe on the refrigerator.




Black Bean Brownies (Makes an 8" square pan or 12 muffin size)

From SnoWhite of Finding Joy in My Kitchen

1 can (15.5 oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed
3 eggs
3 Tbl. olive oil
¼ cup cocoa powder
pinch of salt
½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
¾ cup white sugar
½ cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease an 8" baking pan with non-stick spray, or line 12 wells of a muffin tin with foil liners.

Place the well-rinsed and drained black beans into a blender. Add eggs and olive oil to blender, then puree until smooth. You may need to stop the blender and scrape a few times. There will be some fragments of black bean skins still in the puree, but they won't be noticeable once the brownies are baked. Add remaining ingredients EXCEPT chocolate chips to blender. Pulse a few times to get things started, then continue to blend until smooth, stopping to scrape down sides of blender as needed.

Pour batter into prepared baking pan or divide among the 12 prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Bake 8" pan for about 30 minutes, or the brownie muffins for about 20-22 minutes. Brownies will start to pull away from the edge of the pan when they are done. Brownies will be quite tender and moist, so refrigerate or freeze after a day or so--they won't keep long on the counter.

Review: You really can't tell that there are black beans in the batter for the most part. I think since I knew they were in there I was looking for that taste. They sort of reminded me of passover brownies in a way but defiantly a great substitute for regular brownies if you need to go gluten free. This would not replace real brownies but I think I would make them again in the future.