Ever since my vegan chocolate beet muffin success, I’ve felt a little braver in the baking department. Rizzi from The New York Baking Company (Facebook page) asked me to review their brightly colored silicone baking cups, which you can buy on Amazon here. After doing some research, I decided to try baking vegan, gluten-free black bean brownies. I found a number of different recipes online, and adapted them to make our own unique blend (mainly adapted from The Minimalist Baker’s recipe here). Sasha and I devored them within minutes – they are that good (and we’ve made them multiple times in the past week!). Did I mention they are flourless and have no dairy products? It’s definitely seems too good to be true. I have included photos and the recipe below – I highly recommend you make these if you’re trying to satisfy a sweet tooth. 

The baking cups worked like a charm. They cost $9.95 and are worth every penny. Not only are these colorful cups BPA free, they are easy to clean – just rinse them and pop them into the dishwasher. The cupcakes came right (without any difficulty!) and into our mouths. Delicious! If you enjoy baking but hate peeling cupcakes, brownies, and muffins out of wrappers, I highly recommend you buy these cups.

Ingredients

• 1 can black beans
• 2.5 tablespoons flaxseed meal + 6 tablespoons water to create a flaxseed ‘egg’
• 3 tablespoons of melted coconut oil
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup of Truvia sugar blend
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 bar of vegan, gluten free chocolate (I love this one!)

Steps

1. Turn oven to 350 degrees in the bake setting
2. Mix 2.5 tablespoons of your flaxseed meal with 6 tablespoons of water and set aside to settle
3. Add together all of your dry ingredients (sea salt, cocoa powder, sugar blend, baking powder) and mix
4. Add the melted coconut oil and vanilla extract and stir well
5. Melt the chocolate in the microwave for 1 minute and add to the bowl
6. Add your flax egg – the batter should be icing-like texture at this point
7. In a separate bowl, add the drained, clean black beans and grind them until they are a soft, blended texture (you can do this in a blender or food processor, but my parents don’t have one in their house in Durango – it works easily by hand too)
8. Add the ground beans to the batter and mix well
9. Line your muffin tray with the baking cups and add the batter to each cup – these don’t rise much, so you don’t need to leave space
10. I added some almond butter to the batter for the last few muffins for a little extra kick – delicious!
11. Allow the brownies to bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the outside is slightly crispy, then wait until they cool off and enjoy!

Et voilà – the final product below!

One happy mouth

Recipe adapted from The Minimalist Baker

Baking cups provided by The New York Baking Company – all opinions are my own

Photos by me!