Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Healthy (?) Brownies




I wrote last week about how we had 17 people at our house two weekends ago, 9 of whom were kids. In addition to the two cheesecakes I made, I thought a batch of brownies might go over well with the kids. Around the same time I was planning my desserts, a friend of mine of Facebook asked a general question if anyone had ever made brownies with spinach in them. What? I looked online and found that Jessica Seinfeld had a recipe from her "Deceptively Delicious" book for brownies with spinach and carrots in them. The recipe was online, so I figured I would give it a try.

I made my spinach puree. At this point, I thought about just stopping the madness and finding a new recipe. T is close to starting solids, I could just freeze the puree for when he needs it in a few weeks.


The carrots were already steaming, however, so I figured I might as well keep going. But yikes, this did not seem like a good idea to me. I followed the recipe closely, only substituting butter in for the margarine.


As I mixed it all up, it did start to resemble brownie batter, but I just couldn't get the bright green and orange out of my head.


I baked them up regardless, and let them cool down completely before trying one (as per the recipe). In the end, I just wasn't all that impressed as they didn't seem brownie-like to me. I had Y try one, he said it was fine. K seemed to like them just fine as well, but I am left unconvinced. At the party, only one or two were taken - the cheesecake was obviously better.

 
It's not that they tasted bad. For the most part you couldn't taste the spinach, although I did feel something tasted strange in there. The consistency was also a tad off for me. But most importantly, given that there is 1 cup of purees and then the pan is cut into 12 (I did mine into 16) pieces, I wouldn't really consider these a way to get in the veggies. With 16 squares cut, that equals out to a whopping 1 tablespoon of vegetable puree per brownie. That's not really worth the lack of deliciousness to me.
 
That being said, I am lucky in that K is a little veggie monster. His favorite food is asparagus, closely followed by brocolli. He doesn't care much for pork or beef, but he loves every other protein imaginable. I guess if my kid wouldn't touch a veggie, I might make these again, but for the meantime, I think I will stick to my full fat, full sugar, nothing-healthy-at-all brownies ;)

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