Black Bean Boyfriend Brownies

 

This recipe is a modification of the original "Boyfriend Brownies" at allrecipes.com, my all-time favorite recipe site. For some reason I was really attracted to the name. It's just cute. Turns out that the author's brother's girlfriend used to make these for him, or something like that. Thus the name.

When I posted this recipe to facebook, the first question that was asked was, "Why add black beans?" Well. Let me tell you why. Black beans benefit the digestive tract, help regulate blood sugar, improve cardiovascular health, decrease cancer risk, improve nervous system health, and are rich in molybdenum, a detoxifier, and a potential reducer of impotence in older men. To read the details of all these benefits, you can go HERE if you want.

There are TONS of black bean brownie recipes out there, and I think my mother and I have tried them all. None to our satisfaction. Most of the time the kids wouldn't even eat them... sometimes not even the dog..... Wait, no. We didn't feed our dogs brownies. Dogs can die of chocolate. Anyway, these black bean brownie recipes were also health recipes, with no sugar, or flour, or butter usually. So that's why they were nasty, obviously.

What I wanted to create was a black bean brownie recipe that my kids would love, and not realize that they were ingesting black beans. So no, this is not a health-food brownie, but it's a healthier brownie than it would have been otherwise. Why not have your kids eat a tablespoon of black beans every time they snack on one of your brownies?

So what I did was take my favorite brownie recipe in the world, cut some of the flour, and add a cup of pureed black beans. The problem with my original attempt was that the only black beans I had were the ones I had made for dinner the night before, which I had seasoned with onions, bell peppers, salt and pepper. I really didn't think it would make a huge difference though. It turned out that anyone who didn't know they were eating the previous night's bean soup couldn't detect anything wrong, but the ever-discerning taste-buds of the 17-year-old girl claimed to have sensed a slight onion taste in the brownies. I think she was just being a little bit delusional and dramatic. But who cares anyway. The other 7 kids liked them, so that's all that matters.

Here's the recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients

½	cups all-purpose flour
½	teaspoon baking soda
½	teaspoon salt
¾	cups white sugar
2	T water
⅓	cup butter
1	cup semisweet chocolate
	chips
2	teaspoons vanilla extract
1	cup pureed black beans
2	eggs
1	cup semisweet chocolate
	chips
½	cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl; set aside. Grease and flour a 9×9-inch baking dish.

2. Combine the sugar, water, and butter in a saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and stir in one bag of chocolate chips and the vanilla extract until the chocolate has melted. Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl, add black beans, and beat in the eggs one at a time until smooth. Fold in the flour mixture until incorporated, then fold in the remaining bag of chocolate chips along with the walnuts. Pour into prepared pan.

3. Bake in the preheated oven until the top is dry and the edges have started to pull away from the sides of the pan and knife inserted into center comes out with a small amount of bownie on it, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into squares to serve.