Cooking/Baking Therapy

We’ve all heard about “Shopping Therapy” but I really needed some “Cooking/Baking Therapy” tonight so after making some Moroccan Lamb Stew for dinner and having a little R&R on the couch enjoying the fire in the fireplace I wanted something sweet. My friend Linda recently showed me the Damyhealth site.THANK YOU! what an amazing amount of deeeelicious recipe ideas and healthy ones to boot. Not the kind that substitute Carob for Chocolate… YUCKKKK!!! No, really yummy treats and other recipes. Once you are able to navigate past all the pictures of ladies in Bikinis with before and after weight loss pictures… you can access these yummy recipes.

So I decided to make Blackbean Brownies…. Normally I take every recipe as a guideline but almost always adapt it a bit to my own liking. As this was the first try I thought I'd go by the recipe…..

Black Bean Brownie Ingredients:

1 Can Black Beans (540 mL)

1 Egg

1/4 Cup Eggwhites (or 3 Eggs in total)

1/3 Cup Pumpkin Puree (or unsweetened apple sauce)

1/2 Cup Natural Cocoa Powder

1/4 Tsp Sea Salt

2 Tsp Vanilla Extract

1/4 Cup Coconut  Sugar (or 1/4 Cup Agave, Honey or Maple Syrup)

2 Tbsp Maple Syrup

1 1/2 Tsp Instant Coffee

1 Tsp Baking Powder

1/4 Cup Dark Chocolate Chips (more if you wish)

Peanut Butter Swirl Ingredients:

1/3 Cup Peanut Butter

1 Tbsp Agave (Maple Syrup, Stevia or Honey)

Pinch of Salt

Dash of Vanilla Extract

More detail @ http://www.damyhealth.com/2012/05/black-bean-brownies-with-peanut-butter-swirl/

Here all all the ingredients ready to go in the food processor…. I used Hazelnut butter for the swirl as I prefer that over Peanut butter:

 

 

ready to go into the oven:

 

A snap to make and they turned out looking good, I just could not resist to add a frosting as I had an almost empty Nutella jar in the cupboard that was begging to be used up, a good thing I used Hazelnut Butter :)

I put the whole thing outside to cool off swiftly (Winter temps outside are presently cooler than the fridge…)

Of course you need a glass of cold yummy milk to go with this:

 

I know my food photography skill is quite lacking. I wanted to do a food blog with pictures long ago but never did and now everyone's doing it.... one more reason not to do this for me.... but what the heck, who really cares if you do what 50,000 other people do already.... 

Overall I would call it a success though they lack a bit of Gooeyness. But yummy. Now I am debating whether to tell my hubby that they are sort of healthy or not….depends on how many I want to eat…. I guess that will be the deciding factor hehehe