Recipe #7: Black Bean Brownies

My first experimental recipe!

One thing that my diet kind of requires is that you are okay with eating a lot of the same foods over and over again. Fortunately, I don't mind this. Also, dieticians seem to agree that this is the best way to stay on a diet that allows for weight loss and control. I think it stems from not having to think up new things to eat; you just know what you will be having for pretty much every meal.

I am also fortunate that I don't really crave sweets; I usually have more trouble with salty foods, which I still don't really control that well. I saw that someone had made brownies using beans instead of flour on TV and thought it would be a cool thing to try.

I started researching recipes online and almost all of them used sugar and most of them also used agave nectar, neither of which are on my diet. So a recipe that was the simplest and replaced the sugar with Splenda (actually fake Splenda). So here it goes:

Ingredients
1 can of black beans
3/4 a cup of Splenda (I used generic)
1/4 cup of cocoa powder
1 pinch salt
3 eggs
2 tbsp. canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Steps:

1. Rinse the can of beans thoroughly in water to remove all liquid. This is important because otherwise the brownies will taste salty.
2. Put all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until it is a smooth batter.
3. Spray an 8"x8" baking pan with non-stick cooking spray and poor your batter in.
4. Place brownies in a pre-heated 350-degree oven for 20 minutes or until the edges start seperating from the pan.
5. Take the brownies out and let cool completely.
6. Cut and "enjoy".

Total calories: ~900  (plus a lot of fiber and protein and no carbs besides the fiber in the beans)

You probably noticed that I said "enjoy" in quotations. This is because, although everyone said that these brownies were just like real brownies, I found them like "Healthy Choice" brownies, or something of that type. They are dry-ish and not chewie and dense like a real brownie. I'm sure that using real sugar or agave nectar or chocolate chips would have made them taste better but it also would have violated the rules of my diet and I might as well just make regular brownies anyways.

I did find one thing that made them edible though and still mostly on the diet and that was:

If a put a 1/2 tbsp. of peanut butter on one of the slices of brownie, it made a good ~150 calorie desert with lots of protein and fiber and almost no sugar.

So this experiment was okay...I'm not sure if I would do it again. I did end up eating all of the brownies over the course of a few days but I don't think that would have been possible if I didn't add peanut butter. If I did make them again, I would definitely try to change something but maybe brownies are meant for binge day anyways.