April Fool's Black Bean Brownies

To go with this chilly weather, an end-of-April Fool’s joke, I made black bean brownies.  “Hiding” ingredients like zucchini, kale, sweet potatoes, black beans, avocado, tofu, and other such stereotypically healthy food in dessert or snackish food is one, a pastime of mine, and two, fits the genre of April Fool’s food.

April Fool’s Brownies

Modified from http://happyherbivore.com/2009/05/vegan-blackbean-brownies/

1/3 cup GF rolled oats OR quick oats OR oat flour (I went with rolled oats)

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch or regular)

1 teaspoon cinnamon (I highly recommend Vietnamese cinnamon if you can get it)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

1 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed well

1/3 cup agave nectar

1 banana, frozen (thawing’s optional)

flesh of 1/2 a large baked sweet potato (about 3/4 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Grease an 8*8” glass pan.  In food processor, if not using oat flour, process oats until finely ground.  In a large bowl, whisk together ground oats/oat flour, cocoa, cinnamon, baking soda, and xanthan gum.

In the food processor, process beans, agave, banana, and sweet potato until uniformly blended and bean skins have been properly pulverised.  

Add wet to dry and mix well.  Fold in any optional chunks (raisins, chocolate chips, nuts) and transfer to baking dish.  Bake for 30 minutes or until it cracks on the top, pulls away from the sides of the pan, mostly passes the toothpick test (a toothpick will be wet but it shouldn’t be dripping or heavily coated).  Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes then carefully flip onto a rack.  These are soft so they will get rack marks.

My grandfather approved, so these brownies are OK for wider audiences than your food allergy friends.

Last night I gave the food processor a run for its money (and I dropped it, chipping the top tamper thing, but that’s another story) by processing a dinner-serving of last week's curried lentils with 1/2 cup toasted walnuts, about 1 teaspoon toasted mustard seeds, and about 8 ounces of wilting spinach.

Lunch dip!

I noticed when I ate curry for supper on Monday then followed Jillian Michaels’ “Extreme Shed & Shred” on Tuesday morning in my room, my sweat smelled like garlic and curry.  I like working out in my room since it’s warm and I actually sweat.  The gym at school is generally too cold for me to sweat, though I bundle up when I go.  Clearly, I’m not working out hard enough.

“Don’t talk to me about voodoo child/ Don’t talk to me about your voodoo world.”  --“Long Pig” by The March Violets.  

I made a version of Fat Goblin's Voodoo Queso.  I pretty much followed the ingredients list, guessing at quantities, substituting and omitting as I went.

A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, not 1/3 cup, would have been better, methinks.  However, it’s serviceable.  I saw the queso at Pangea Vegan Store when I visited a while back (sheez, it’s been six weeks).  I think I may use my overly-vinegary version to bake some tofu, similar to a salmon recipe my mom made once in recent memory (parents had fish, I had tofu).

Speaking of the filthy dorm kitchen (where I am no longer), I re-seasoned my cast iron pan this evening since I could never quite clean it at school.  My grandparents’ house now smells of cooked metal.  Soon I shall make an inaugural cornbread.

Q

P.S. Holy Cats, Laurie Sadowski read my blog!  Starstruck!