Black Bean Brownies

Hey guys, Jess and Tom here today again,

This is part two of our christmas meal. These are very simple, and if you own a food processor then it's even easier! Tom: The recipe is pretty much lifted from the Happy Herbivore website (all credit to her! -http://happyherbivore.com/recipe/vegan-blackbean-brownies/) but I'm experimenting with a Toffee Apple Fudge brownie so hopefully a different version will be to follow! We won't try to convince you further of pulse-based baking, we are fully converted but if you need more convincing, these brownies will do it by themselves. However, if this is the first pulse-baking recipe you've seen, have a look at the butterbean cookies made previously for more of an explanation of how this type of cooking works. This is vegan and gluten free (as long as you use certified oats).

Ingredients:

1 can of Black Beans (drained and washed thoroughly)
1 Banana
1/3 cup Cocoa
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Oats
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (you can use extract, but this has so much a richer and generally better flavour that it's worth investing in a pot, providing you can stop yourself from eating it by the spoonful -  we didn't manage this)
Handful of Cashews

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
If you have a food processor, chuck everything in a food processor, pulse until mixed and then scrape into a dish and bake
If you don't; blend the beans using a hand blender, then add the rest of the ingredients except for the cashews and then blend until mixed (not smooth)
Scrape into a baking dish and then stud with cashews (if you can blend nuts using your hand blender feel free but we were pretty sure the cheap one we had would break so we left it)
Bake for roughly 20 minutes until a knife or toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean
Cut into six and eat warm or cold

We served ours with alpro soya caramel dessert - a definite winning combination!

Hope you enjoy this recipe, and we will hopefully have a different version up soon! Let us know how youg et on making them at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com