healthy "brownies"

Pinterest.  Oh how I get sucked into pinning all sorts of yummy looking food.  Lately I feel like a lot of what I have pinned has been "healthy desserts."  Food that satisfies your sweet tooth, but cuts some calories.  Who doesn't love that?

It's a funny trend to me.  I've been making "healthy" desserts for a while... before Pinterest made them cool.  But healthy desserts to me meant things like subbing wheat flour for white, adding some flax, using banana or applesauce as natural sweetener, or yogurt for butter or cream cheese.  Not things like beans in cookies and brownies, avocado in frosting, or dates as chocolate.  I was a little skeptical when I started seeing these recipes.  Really?  I mean, Really?  You can't taste the beans or avocado in them?  I'm all about cutting calories, but I still want my sweet things to taste good... not earthy (although I have used beets in a chocolate cake and that was delicious).  So I was a little slow to jump on this band wagon.

But then a friend of mine made some black bean brownies that I thought were very good, so I decided I should give it a try.  The result:  I didn't like mine as much.  I could taste the beans.  Maybe b/c I made them and watched the beans being processed?  So I tried to redeem them and turned them into black bean brownie/chocolate date balls and Beckham thinks they are chocolate.  Fantastic, because I still don't really like them. :)  Something is off with the texture and I think they still taste like beans.

Next I was just too curious about the whole avocado/chocolate frosting thing.  I found this recipe on Pinterest and gave it a whirl.  I halved the recipe and followed it to a tee, except for I accidentally used only 3/4 of an avocado instead of 1 1/2 - 2, so the cocoa was too strong and I had to add more sweetener.  But it still made plenty of frosting, so the full amount of avocado seems like it would be too much.
Overall these are pretty tasty, but lets just say that they should not be called brownies (although the first time Beck saw them he called them brownies :)).  They are really nothing like brownies except for the fact that they have chocolate frosting.. which I am a fan of.  I think the avocado gets lost completely in the cocoa.  The texture of the "brownie" part is nothing like a normal brownie, as the chia seeds add lots of crunchiness.  But overall they were tasty and a fun treat to keep in the freezer.  I felt pretty good about eating them, with so many healthy ingredients and all.  They tasted the best after they thawed out a little bit but were still cold and firm.

the brownie

I ate most of the brownies without sharing with Beck, but then one day he noticed me getting it out of the freezer and had to have some.  He Loved them and instantly commanded control of the fork, letting me have a couple small bites. ;)

So the point of all this?  I'm still trying to decide what I think of this whole new world of healthy desserts.  Some turn out great, but if it's a flop I'm stuck eating a bunch of so-so mock dessert something (or giving it to my kid), which I will likely slather with peanut butter or nutella to improve the flavor... b/c who throws away food?!  I will likely stick to my version of healthy desserts, being more adventurous and trying new things here and there but skip on the beans... I'll save those for my savory food where they belong. :)

And if you are curious, chocolatecoveredkatie.com is a site that posts all kinds of healthy desserts, sometimes using fairly unique ingredients in them.