Black Bean Brownies

image source (a different recipe for black bean brownies)

image source (a different recipe for black bean brownies)

Christmas is a day for treats. But it doesn’t have to be a day of sugar. Our massage therapist Shannaw Martin pointed us to a recipe for black bean brownies that my wife Gail then modified. These brownies cannot match the addictive quality of sugary brownies, but for those who have gone off sugar and flour, the recipe below produces brownies that are surprisingly good.

Black Bean Brownies

Ingredients:

2/3 cup dried black beans that have been soaked overnight in 3 cups water—ideally with some baking soda added—which is then drained and replaced with another 3 cups water, then cooked in a pressure cooker. Follow the instructions of your pressure cooker when cooking the beans. (The presoaking and pressure cooking is to help destroy the lectins that I worry about in my post “What Steven Gundry's Book 'The Plant Paradox' Adds to the Principles of a Low-Insulin-Index Diet.”)

3 organic eggs

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 C cocoa powder (100% cocoa)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 C Chocolate bar chipped

2/3 C Swerve (play with less—it's supposed to be sugar, so bear that in mind)

1 tsp organic vanilla

3 TBS coconut oil (warmed in the oven or on the stovetop to a liquid form)

1/2 tsp coffee

Preheat oven to 350.


The secret is in the order...

Wet -- pressure-cooked black beans, eggs, little extra vanilla, a little extra coffee in mixer, (mix good)

Dry — Swerve, baking powder, kosher salt, heaping cup of 100% special dark cocoa powder.

Add wet to dry and mix together. Add the heaping spoons of coconut oil that you warmed in the oven into mix.

Before adding 72% or higher organic chocolate chunks grease the pan with lots of coconut oil.

Mix all together and pour into pan. Bake 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees. The above recipe is for 10 brownies. I always double it! Enjoy!!

Grease pan with coconut oil

References:

Don’t miss my other posts on diet and health:

I. The Basics

II. Sugar as a Slow Poison

III. Anti-Cancer Eating

IV. Eating Tips

V. Calories In/Calories Out

VI. Wonkish

VIII. Debates about Particular Foods and about Exercise

IX. Gary Taubes

X. Twitter Discussions

XI. On My Interest in Diet and Health

See the last section of "Five Books That Have Changed My Life" and the podcast "Miles Kimball Explains to Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal Why Losing Weight Is Like Defeating Inflation." If you want to know how I got interested in diet and health and fighting obesity and a little more about my own experience with weight gain and weight loss, see “Diana Kimball: Listening Creates Possibilities and my post "A Barycentric Autobiography.