Monday, September 01, 2008

Lions and Tigers and Black Bean Brownies! Oh My!!!

Well, I've done the amazing. At least it will be to those of you who REALLY know me and know my deep loathing of taking time to cook. At home. In the actual kitchen. With the oven. Okay, well you get the point.

I bit the big one today and, drum roll please, cooked. In fact, I baked. I baked Black Bean Brownies today, which, I might add, are not the least bit yucky. Part of my sudden desire to get into the kitchen was motivated by chocolate (I wanted some. . .badly, but didn't want to blow a ton of points). The other part was due to budgetary reasons. My student loans are going to start kicking in real soon if I don't start that Ph.D of mine. That means, I really need to curb back the eating out and the scale of prepackaged "food" items I purchase. I actually found a website that proves it's even cheaper to cook at home versus going to the (YUCK) fast food joints and ordering off the dollar menu.

The verdict? The Black bean brownies are not too shabby. The texture is fudgie, which is how I like brownies anyway. I should have used a small pan and I used an 8x11, which made my brownies thinner than what I would like. So. . . next time I'll try a smaller pan. Now, will they fool someone into thinking they've got a regular, full fat brownie? No. Are they a good substitute? Yup and they've got lots of fiber! For my first Black bean brownie experiement, I went for the version where only a brownie mix and a can of black beans is blended together. Next time, I may get brave and make it "from scratch."

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