vanilla | Earthgiven Kitchen

I was delighted when I was contacted by Carrie of Carrie on Vegan blog and offered a free download of her vegan recipe app Vegan Delish. I had the app downloaded for less than five minutes before I was in the kitchen whipping up Carrie’s brownies. It seems recipes for black bean brownies are ubiquitous these days though I hadn’t tried making any yet, and I was most intrigued by Carrie’s spinach black bean brownies that were completely whole foods based: no sugar, salt or oil.

The result: the brownies were super easy to make and they have the perfect fudgy texture. On their own the brownies aren’t very sweet (if you’re used to typical brownies), but the vanilla cream frosting is a perfect sweet topping without sugar. When the kids asked for seconds, I didn’t hesitate to give in! I even had one for breakfast the next day! I’ll certainly be making them again.

Carrie has kindly given me permission to publish her recipes for Spinach Black Bean Brownies and Vanilla Cream Frosting here. Photos are courtesy of Vegan Delish.

Spinach Black Bean Brownies

Ingredients

2 cups medjool dates, pitted
2 cups baby spinach
1/3 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (if needed to blend)
1/3 cup rolled oats
nonstick cooking spray
1 tablespoon chia seeds
3 cups black beans
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup carob powder
1/2 cup unsalted almond butter

Instructions

1. Bring dates to room temperature.
2. Preheat oven to 300° F or 150° C.
3. Lightly spray a large baking dish with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
4. Combine beans, dates, almond butter, oats, vanilla extract, chia seeds, spinach and carob powder in a high-speed blender and process until as smooth as possible, using the tamper to push the ingredients into the blade. Add unsweetened soy milk if necessary to blend.
5. Pour batter into baking dish and bake for one hour. Drop the temperature to 250° F or 120° C and bake for another hour or until the top of the brownies have started to brown slightly.
6. Alternatively, you can bake the brownies at 375° F or 190° C for 45 minutes. If the top of the brownies begins to burn during the last 10-15 minutes of baking, drop the temperature to 350° F or 180° C.
7. Let brownies chill completely before serving, preferably overnight in the refrigerator. Serve with Vanilla Cream Frosting, if desired.

Vanilla Cream Frosting

Ingredients

1 cup medjool dates, pitted
1/2 cup unsalted cashews
2/3 cup unsweetened soy milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Combine cashews, soy milk, dates and vanilla in a high-speed blender and process until smooth.

Enjoy!

Other recipes in the app that look great that I’ll try soon are Chocolate Buckwheat Brittle, Sweet Potato Cookies and The Ultimate Tofu Burger (that comes with a great tip for freezing and defrosting tofu to get the perfect burger texture). I appreciate the organization of the app: you can search by category like Breakfast or Gluten-Free, keep track of your favourites, write recipe reviews and export an ingredient shopping list. All recipes have colour photos (I’m really not a fan of cookbooks without photos, I need the photos!). You can get the Vegan Delish app for your iPhone or iPad for the introductory price of $1.99; not bad for 75 recipes! Find out more at Vegan Delish.com.

Carrie has kindy donated one free download of the Vegan Delish app to a lucky Earthgiven Kitchen reader. To enter, leave a comment on this post by Thursday, March 21st — tell me what you’re most looking forward to this spring! On March 22nd I’ll randomly select one winner from everyone who comments. You’ll have to act fast if you’re the winner as the code must be downloaded by March 26th. Good luck!

March 22nd Update: And the winner is….. April! Congratulations! I will send your email to Carrie who will email you your download code. Thanks for playing!

Hey, it’s my 50th post! Thanks all for sticking around. I’m having a blast. The blogger challenges have been particularly enjoyable. I’ve just starting participating in Healthy Vegan Fridays, What I Ate Wednesdays and this is my third month with the Vegan Food Swap, where participants are paired with vegan foodie penpals and send and receive treats once a month.

Time to reveal this month’s box of delicious treats, this time courtesy of Sasha from One Small Vegan. I love that nearly everything she sent me was a new discovery. I’m a big food geek, so this was exciting for me. Meanwhile, I sent a goodie bag of vegan treats to Gabby at The Veggie Nook. I left for holidays the day after my package arrived so I haven’t had time to try everything yet. I look forward to sampling everything before long. Here’s what Sasha gifted me with:

–Yogavive popped apple chips. Delicious! How do you pop an apple? I don’t know and the Yogavive people are mum on their website. I made the tactical error of opening the teeny package in front of three other people, so I shared them, and I only got to have two little pieces. So the lesson, folks, is to open and eat teeny bags of delicious food alone!

–One Earth Organic Coconut Sugar. Dr. Oz says this is the best alternative to white sugar, did ya know? That’s because it’s minimally processed with low glycemic index and a source of several nutrients, unlike cane sugar. Wouldn’t it be awesome in my Spiced Coconut Mango Muffins? YES!

–Cavena Naked Oats by Smart and Natural Foods. This Canadian product is a a new variety of oats (GMO-free) that are naturally hull-less and hair-less meaning less processing and waste, so the website says. These whole grains are have a decent amount of protein and iron. I hadn’t seen it in stores near me yet (Sasha lives in another province) though I had heard buzz of this new grain and had been keen to try it.

–VerMints. All natural vegan mints! VerMints from Vermont, how cute. And I’ll be keeping the adorable tin they come in.

–Vanilla bean pods. I told Sasha of allergy to alcohol, meaning I can’t have any food with traditional vanilla extract, among many other ingredients that make my allergy supremely annoying. How sweet of Sasha to send me whole vanilla bean pods! A vanilla bead pod is not cheap, and I’ve never treated myself to one, so I really appreciate the generous and thoughtful gesture.

–Assorted teas and Sweet Leaf stevia. Stevia is my sweetener of choice in my tea. The chocolate tea was particularly nice.

–Chocolate Vega Macaroons. I LOVE homemade treats! Especially with chocolate and/or coconut. They were super. They came with me on holiday to the cottage in a plain tin to attract no notice from the nine other people I was sharing food with, meanwhile eating them when I was alone. I learned my lesson from the apple chips! Okay, I shared a few. But reluctantly. They were really good! And best of all, Sasha shared the recipe here so you can make them yourself.
Thank you very much, Sasha, for a lovely box of treats! It was a foodie dream come true!