Dairy-Free & Gluten-Free Black Bean Brownies

The Dry Ingredients

This easy recipe comes together in a blink of an eye! There are only three dry ingredients you need.

1. Gluten-Free Baking Flour. If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’m partial to Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour. This flour is great for baking desserts and has a fluffy consistency. Unlike other gluten-free flours, you don’t have to mix multiple flours (rice, almond, etc.) to get the desired consistency.
2. Baking powder is a must with these brownies! A little bit goes a long ways so you only need a teaspoon to get perfectly fluffy, moist brownies.
3. Salt will balance the sweetness from the dark chocolate and also compliment it well. You’ll need less than a teaspoon here.

That’s it! While there are other dry ingredients in this recipe, like the espresso powder and cocoa powder, those will be mixed into the wet ingredients. But, we’ll get to that later!

It wouldn’t be a true brownie recipe without chocolate. Over the years, I’ve been on the hunt for the best dark chocolate chips. And I’m happy to say that after a lot of recipe testing (and taste testing), I’ve found them! For this recipe, I used Lily’s Dark Chocolate Chips. These dark chocolate chips contain 55% cocoa and are sweetened with stevia. Would you believe there’s no sugar added to these? There’s also no dairy! So, if you use these chips then this recipe can also be paleo.

To incorporate these dark chocolate chips into these brownies, we combine them with melted coconut oil. I like to heat up one third cup of coconut oil in the microwave for about thirty seconds. Then, I pour the dark chocolate chips in a bowl. I pour about one tablespoon of melted coconut oil into the chocolate chips at a time, and stir after. I found that if you pour all of the oil in at once, it gets too watery. However, if you do it slowly, then the chocolate is able to melt and become a beautiful syrup-like consistency.

So, as tempting as it to dump the melted coconut oil into the dark chocolate chips, just do it one tablespoon at a time and stir between. I promise the result will be a thousand times better!

The Rest of the Ingredients

By now, you’re probably asking yourself where the rest of the ingredients are. We’ve covered the dry ingredients, the dark chocolate chips, and coconut oil. But what about everything else?

Would you believe me if I said the rest of the ingredients are combined in a blender? Yes, you read that right. No kitchen aid or hand mixer required! That’s one of the great things about this recipe, it truly is so easy to make. So, here’s what’s going in the blender….

• Two 15 ounce cans of black beans
• Four room temperature eggs
• Six pitted dates
• Two thirds cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• Half a cup of maple syrup
• A fourth cup of honey
• Two teaspoons of espresso powder
• One and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract

So, let’s break that down. First, you’re going to drain and rinse the black beans. Make sure you rinse the beans until the water runs clear. Then, add the beans to the blender and pulse on high for one minute. It’s important to mix the beans first because they are our main ingredient and we want them to have a smooth texture. After the beans are pureed, you can add the rest of the ingredients to the blender. There’s no need to add one egg at a time or dice the dates. The blender will mix everything for you!

The Final Steps

We’re almost done! All the ingredients are laid out, now it’s just time to bring everything together. So, we have….

1. The blender with the mixed ingredients
2. The bowl of combined dark chocolate chips and coconut oil
3. The dry ingredients

First, transfer the batter from the blender to a large bowl with a spatula. Then, pour in the melted chocolate from the small bowl. Use a whisk to throughly combine the ingredients. Finally, sift in the dry ingredients to the large bowl. Whisk until all of the dry and wet ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Now, it’s time to transfer the batter to a baking dish.

Line a 9″ x 9″ baking dish with parchment paper. This will save you so much time and energy from trying to get the brownies out of the pan! Then, pour the batter over the parchment paper into the pan. The batter should fill the pan a little more than halfway. Place the pan on the middle rack in the center of the oven. Bake the brownies at 375 degrees for 75 minutes.

After the allotted time, turn off the oven and remove the brownies. Allow the brownies to cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Then, pick up the corners of the parchment paper and remove from the pan. Both the paper and brownies should come off clean. Place the parchment paper with the brownies on top of wire rack or cutting board. Allow the brownies to cool again for five minutes before slicing with a clean knife. Finally, garnish with flakey sea salt and enjoy!

Refined Sugar-Free, Dairy-Free and Gluten-Free

You may have noticed that there’s no cane or brown sugar in this recipe. There’s also no butter or heavy cream used. That means that this recipe isn’t only gluten-free and dairy-free but also refined sugar free. Those three combined make for a paleo recipe!

As mentioned above about the dark chocolate, this recipe can be made paleo if you use the correct chocolate chips. Lily’s Dark Chocolate Chips are sweetened with stevia, but have no added sugar or dairy! While you don’t have to use those exact chocolate chips, if you are trying to make this recipe paleo just be sure to use the correct chocolate.