Vegan Spinach Brownie Recipe

Enjoying baked goods doesn't have to mean downing loads of refined sugar, white flour or trans fat. We've brought in registered dietitian, sports nutritionist to the New York Rangers and bestselling author Cynthia Sass to show us a decadent brownie recipe that includes healthy, secret ingredient, spinach. That's an amazing way to add nutrients. I never thought of that. Yeah. 'Cause I would imagine it would change the consistency a little bit. It doesn't change consistency or the flavor. It blends right in. You won't even know it's there. I'm not sure about this one. Hey, let's see. We're gonna have to try it out. So, here's what you'll need from my secret Spinach brownies. Start out with some wholly wheat pastry flour, some almond flour, some raw organic sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, baking powder, and a little salt, water, extra virgin olive oil, cold press, some organic vanilla extract, of course our star ingredient the raw spinach, and then semi-sweet chocolate chips. Okay. So first thing, we're going to pre-heat our oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit Then we're going to mix together all of our dry ingredients. I love almond flour, it's such a great alternative to refined flour, as it adds all those heart healthy fats and proteins. Absolutely. We're going to mix together all these dry ingredients really thoroughly and get them prepared to be able to add in our wet ingredients. Okay. So, our next step is to add the wet ingredients to our blender here. So, we've got our water. Great. Olive oil. Beautiful extra virgin olive oil. Okay. Now, we've got our, does this smell great, our vanilla extract. And then, just go ahead and put the spinach in there, with the stems on it even. Great, now I see you're using raw spinach for base. Good using frozen versus raw, does that change the consistency? The frozen is more compact. So, you might not even have to use as much. But once you blend it in, you won't even notice the difference. Okay. So all of our ingredients are in here. We're going to go ahead and whip it up, it's going to be beautiful too. So you just want to liquify it. Bits of spinach anymore. So now we just got a liquid puree here, it looks like a green smoothie. It does. But don't worry it's not going to turn your brownies green, it's still going to be brown. So now we are just going to add this to our dry mixture. Okay. Just pour it right in and then fold it. Green, gobbly mess. Electric green. Beautiful. But the pigment that gives spinach its beautiful green color is responsible for its antioxidants so we love that. That's the chlorophyll, right? Absolutely. So we're going to fold that in until it becomes a nice, batter like texture, your typical brownie texture. Now we're going to add these dark chocolate chips. Another great way to add in your antioxidants. Now I like my brownies to be a little more compact and fudgey. So that's what these are going to be like. Look how gorgeous that looks. That's so gorgeous. And the best thing about this recipe, because it's vegan, there's no animal products in here, you could actually lick the spoon. I can't wait to try these. Into the oven. Into the oven. So, we're gonna leave them in there for about 15 to 20 minutes. I like to check on them after about 15 minutes to see how they're doing depends on how hot your oven is, but you can do that little test where you put a toothpick in. It comes out clean. You're probably good. Or if it's no longer shiny on top, it's probably done. Go ahead, take them out and let them Sit at room temperature for at least ten minutes. So to finish it off I'd like to top with a little pureed in season fruit. So we're just going to put a little on top, it add more color, flavor, aroma, antioxidants. And I love that you say they should be in season, because that's when they're at their peak nutritionally. Absolutely. Let's try them. Let's dig in. I truly cannot believe that there is spinach in these brownies. And they're so decadent and moist and fudgey. They're really fudgey. You won't miss your regular nutritional brownie at all. I'm having another piece. Thanks, Cynthia. My pleasure. Thank you. See you next time on FitSugarTV.