Dark Chocolate Brownies

The brownies I used to bake had coconut shreds and gf rolled oats which created a very nice cake texture. Skipping the saturated fat level of the coconut, I decided to use cashews and gf rolled oats.

Ingredients:

1 cup raw cashew pieces

3 cups gf rolled oats

2 cups water

2 medium to large bananas

6 pitted dates

4 tbls cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

Grapeseed or olive oil to coat the 2.2 liter glass pan

Prep:

Coarse (or fine) grind the cashews with 1 cup of the oats. Oats in first helps keep it from caking too much. I use the Vita-Mix with the dry blender container for this.

Add that to the rest of the oats in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in the cocoa powder and salt until the mix is evenly coated.

In the same blender container, blend the water, bananas, and dates on high. Then blend a bit more at a lower speed to chop the dates better. You can tell the dates aren’t done if you turn the blender off and it sounds like it’s still chunking through something as the blades come to a stop. The dry Vita-Mix blender container isn’t the best tool for this part, but it’s good enough and doesn’t dirty a second blender container.

Pour into the mixing bowl and stir. Pour this into the greased glass pan.

Bake:

Preheat oven to 375 F

Bake for 1 hour with optional turn of the pan at 30 minutes. At the 1 hour mark, turn off the oven and leave it closed until you’re ready to eat and/or put in the fridge. 

Thoughts:

The oats and the banana are binders. No need for egg or flax. Banana also helps remove any chalky texture from the cocoa powder. That’s especially helpful if you’re making pudding with silken tofu, banana, cocoa powder, and a sweetener.

The brownies came out a touch dry. The oats absorb a lot of liquid while they cook. There are a few ways to fix that. One is easy - add more water. The other is to find the best balance between gf rolled oats and cashews. A third option is to add mini chocolate chips. I think my next batch will have 1 1/2 cups of cashews to 2 1/2 cups of oats. I also want to try making a nut-free version using raw sunflower seeds.

These hold together best when cold. They held together better warm than when I made them with coconut shreds.

Egg White Bites (Plus)

I’ve been altering my intake of food for the past 18 months in an effort to be on a more healthy path. So far, I’ve lost the 15 or so pandemic pounds plus a few more that fluctuate a bit. (This is really a recipe post, but I wanted to talk a little about this food journey too.)

First, I swapped foods I was eating for similar ones that had less fat, or less carbs, or less sugars, or a combination thereof. Did this until I was happy with the end result, which meant giving away some food that was a taste bridge too far.

Second, I added regular exercise. Semi-regular, regular exercise. My body was not always cooperative. Figured out a few things, like the pain in my knees was controllable by standing on foot wakers to make my foot muscles unclench. Amazing how connected everything is.

Third, even though I was losing weight, despite the plateaus that lasted 2 months or so, my bloodwork had one concerning value. I did a little research and have adopted slow eating. This basically means fully eating what’s in my mouth before getting more food on my fork or spoon. Remains to be seen if this helps with that one value. It definitely helped me get past the latest plateau.

And now for the recipe - egg whites are not a normal part of my diet, but I’ve had to make some different choices for the next 4-6 months.

Egg White Bites (short version)

Preheat oven at 350 F

1 32 oz carton of egg whites, 7-8 cloves of garlic, spinach, optional Beyond Beef, salt and pepper to taste

Put it all in a blender and rev that up to half speed. Let it blend while you prep the muffin tins.

Line a muffin tin (or two) with paper baking cups. Pour the blender mix into the paper baking cups. Fill about 2/3rds, maybe a little more. This should make 24 large bites. Bake for 40 minutes. The egg whites will sink and the spinach will rise, so these will be white on the bottom half and green on top. Let cool, stick them in the fridge to get them cold, then try to peel off the paper cup. It’ll peel easier when cold, but it still might be a bear.