Saturday, August 11, 2012

vegan baking take one.

OK guys.
Here it is.  My first attempt at vegan cooking.  And I don't mean a dish, like a salad, that just happens to be vegan.

I mean legitimate, conscious effort, bona fide, straight up (you get the idea...) vegan cooking.

The first idea was sparked from this post on one of my new blog crushes (seriously, I lose track of time so bad it's not even funny reading through her blog.  Not to mention it blows my mind that she has over 4,000 followers.  Kudos).

If you clicked on the link, you already know that this recipe has only TWO ingredients.  That's right, two.





A brownie mix and a can of black beans (I guess technically there are three including the water.  Even more technically four if you add vanilla, but still pretty simple).  Yep.  Black BEANS.  I've heard of beans in baking before, but was never daring enough to actually try it.  Although, the other recipe called for a can of pork and beans, which eliminates the vegan factor.

I fudged (see what I did there?) the recipe a little, except minus the fudge part because she used a fudge brownie mix too, and decided to go for the regular brownie mix and not the reduced fat one.  I also omitted the chocolate chips and added just a little bit of vanilla, like a teaspoon or so.


As much as I love baking and baking from scratch, I'm not above the convenience of a boxed whatever mix, especially when you're trying things out for the first time.


Before you go running for your barf bags, trust me.  These brownies are delicious.  This is coming from someone who used to hate beans and still slightly dry heaves at the thought of refried beans.

I took my chances when my roommates weren't home and hurried to whip up this recipe before they had the chance to think that I really lost my mind.  One of them has already mentioned that I'm "really going all out" when she saw my soy milk in the fridge.  Which I'm still not entirely sure I'm actually going to drink.  For now I plan on using it as an ingredient when cooking.

But back to the brownies.

If you didn't click on the link, but really you should, because her blog is that cool, I'll give you the run down.

Drain and rinse the can of beans.
Put in a blender.
Add a cup of water.
Pulverize the living daylights out of the beans until they are smooth.
Add to the brownie mix.
Stir.
Bake according to the directions.
Enjoy.

That is it.
So Easy.
So Delicious.
Seriously.  They're thick and chewy and don't taste like beans.
So vegan.

I wasn't looking for a vegan brownie recipe when I stumbled across this gem and it isn't even advertised as vegan and busy bee lauren isn't even vegan herself.  But I noticed that all of the two ingredients are vegan friendly.  Yep.  Including the brownie mix.  At least as far as I can tell (cocoa powder is vegan  and it seems like the chocolate in the mix would be the only questionable ingredient).  Even if it ends up not being vegan, it's darn close and my first attempt.  So haters can step off.  At least I'm trying.

I'm trying this one next.


2 comments:

  1. That's awesome! My older brother made gluten free brownies with black beans once and they were delicious. He refused to tell us what was in the brownies until after we tried them, though.

    Also, I've never had soy milk but I really love almond milk.

    ReplyDelete
  2. At least use the soy milk on your cereal... even if you can't chug a glass of it.

    ReplyDelete

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