

Instead of adding water, vegetable oil, and an egg to the brownie mix, you puree a can of black beans in a blender with 1/3 cup water. Today’s recipe is even simpler because it only has two ingredients.

My black bean blender brownie is a favorite for the gluten-free crowd. If you’re just eating one, there's not a big nutritional difference.I have been working with this concept for a while. But if not-or if you aren’t particularly into the idea of hiding veggies in your dessert-go ahead and indulge in the real thing. So if you want our two cents, we say people who are into baking should definitely try the zucchini brownie recipe (or the black bean brownie recipe if you don’t like cakey brownies-you're probably best off just skipping the avocado brownies unless you're really curious). Zucchini brownies: 210 cal, 9 g fat (2 g saturated), 33 g carbs, 23 g sugar, 190 mg sodium, 1 g fiber, 2 g proteinĪvocado brownies: 170 cal, 10.5 g fat (4.5 g saturated), 17 g carbs, 12 g sugar, 20 mg sodium, 3 g fiber, 2 g proteinĭuncan Hines brownies: 150 cal, 7 g fat (1.5 g saturated), 22 g carbs, 15 g sugar, 95 mg sodium, less than 1 g fiber, 2 g protein Although none of the food bloggers whose recipes we used published nutrition info on their brownies, we crunched the numbers and found the following nutrition stats for each brownie:īlack bean brownies: 160 cal, 7 g fat (4.5 g saturated), 23 g carbs, 17 g sugar, 160 mg sodium, 2 g fiber, 4 g protein But we do want to take this opportunity to point out that, when you look into the nutrition stats, there wasn’t a huge difference-and, in fact, the Duncan Hines brownies have the fewest calories of any of the treats we tested. Granted, you probably wouldn’t be eating these healthy brownies alongside box-mix brownies, and we assume you’d enjoy them more without any point of comparison to bring them down. See the above photo evidence, which shows that one of our guinea pigs devoured the entire Dunan Hines brownie.but left all of the other brownies unfinished on her official blind taste test napkin.

So much so that one of our editors even ranked it above the Duncan Hines brownies. It wasn’t as rich and chocolatey as some brownies we’ve tasted in our vast brownie-eating experiences, but this recipe’s cake-like texture and thin layer of frosting that didn’t contain any hidden plant-based ingredients-just good ol’ cocoa powder, melted butter, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and salt-were definitely legit. The victor of the three healthy brownie recipes was.drumroll, please.the zucchini brownie. Immediately, we got some strong reactions, ranging from “this one tastes like wet sand” to “none of these are bad-I would take any of these to a party” to “I can definitely taste the healthy ingredient in this one.”īut after all of the rankings were tallied, there was a clear winner. We just set them all out and asked everyone to rank the brownies from best to worst in three categories: flavor, texture, and overall. RELATED: 6 Things That Happened When I Stopped Eating Sugarīecause we wanted our results to be legit, the bakers didn’t reveal to anyone else participating which brownies were which.or that we had “regular” brownies on the table. There was only one thing left to do: Taste the brownies. Of course, it didn’t help seeing these healthy stand-ins alongside the Duncan Hines batter, which smelled like heaven.īut a funny thing happened when the pans came out of the oven: All of the brownies ended up looking fairly normal (apart from a few visible avocado pieces).

Plus, it was annoying AF to grate an entire zucchini-it took way longer than expected, and ended up being pretty messy. And the zucchini recipe (which you'll see on the right above) looked really dry and powdery for a long time, until the liquid from the grated zucchini finally absorbed into the rest of the ingredients after about 10 minutes. The other batters had their own issues: Although we chose pretty ripe avocados, we couldn’t get rid of the small green chunks in the sludge-like batter (the left image above), no matter how long we blended it. When we blended in the eggs, vanilla, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, sugar, and coconut oil, our kitchen started to smell a little better, but we still wouldn’t call it appetizing. The first step in making black bean brownies, for example, involves putting an entire can of black beans in a food processor or blender, which smells, well, disgusting. We split up the baking among two editors, and we both noticed pretty quickly that the process was a little.off.
