These are pretty awesome. They're dense and fudgy and they completely succeed in indulging my daily chocolate craving.
The fun fact is that they're actually made with black beans(!), but I promise, you would NEVER know.
They're also gluten free, dairy free (even vegan if you sub chia seeds for the eggs), and refined-sugar free. But I hate writing all that because then you're probably thinking, "gross."
I assure you they're not!
Try these (I recommend cold, straight out of the fridge) and I guarantee you'll feel chocolately satisfied, and great!
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Chocolate Brownie Cups
- Prep Time: 15
- Cook Time: 15
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: Healthy Baking
- Diet: Gluten Free
Description
Makes 12 you'll-NEVER-guess-these-are-made-with-black-beans brownie cups.
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup maple syrup (125 ml)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 can black beans (14 oz)
- 2 TB coconut oil (28 g)
- 6 TB cacao powder (40 g)
- ¼ tsp fine-grain salt (like table or sea salt)
- 2 ½ oz dark chocolate (70%), chopped (75 g)
- 1 ¾ oz Medjool dates, pitted and chopped (50 g)
- flaky sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 F degrees.
- Grease a 12-cup muffin pan (I use coconut oil).
- In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, maple syrup and vanilla. Set aside.
- Drain the beans and rinse well under cold water.
- In a food processor, combine the drained and rinsed beans, coconut oil, cacao, and salt and blend until you have a smooth dough.
- Add the maple syrup mixture and pulse until you have a wet dough. The batter will be pretty loose.
- Pour the batter into a bowl and stir in the chopped chocolate and dates.
- Divide the batter among the 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with flaky sea salt.
- Bake 12-15 minutes, until the edges begin to brown.
- Let rest 5 minutes in pan, then remove to cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
You can easily make these vegan by substituting the eggs with 2 TB chia seeds mixed with 4 TB cold water. Then, combine the chia mixture with the maple syrup and vanilla and proceed as instructed.
It can be hard to find a 14oz can of black beans. FWIW, I've successfully made this recipe many times with a 15oz can.
I like to make these with raw cacao powder, but feel free to use traditional cocoa powder instead.
The smaller you chop the dates, the less noticeable (in texture) they'll be. The preference is yours.
I like to store these in the refrigerator, where the cold helps them taste extra fudgy.
Recipe adapted from A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones.
Keywords: chocolate, brownies, vegan, gluten free, black beans, dairy free, sugar free
Mark Truesdell
These brownie cups are light, fluffy, delicious and totally rich. I love black beans so we had to try it. We thought the beans might might make it heavy - but these are light and moist and not too filling. The regular 15oz can of black beans worked well.
Note: It is important to grease the muffin pan as stated in the recipe. I thought we didn't need to because of our non-stick pfas free pan. They did stick without the grease -but we got enough of the tops and middles to know we will make these again.
★★★★★
Sarah Marx Feldner
Thank you so much for this feedback, Mark! And I'm so happy you were adventurous and trusted a black bean BROWNIE! They really are fun, right?!?