Sprout & Pea

I’m a big fan of one of Michael Pollan’s food rules — eat as much junk food as you want, as long as you cook it your­self. I had a bit of a sweet tooth yes­ter­day after­noon, so instead of div­ing for the Ben and Jerry’s at the bodega, I decided to make myself some brown­ies — gluten-free, healthy style. Enter this recipe that I found on Elana’s Pantry. It’s flour­less, sug­ar­less and made with two of my favorite things — almond but­ter and agave.

I was very curi­ous how these would turn out since the base was almond but­ter. To my sur­prise, they tasted just as good as a flour-packed, un-nutritional brownie, and yet, they are packed with good-for-you ingre­di­ents. To mix it up a lit­tle, I decided to try adding tea to these since they seemed to add a nice fla­vor to the cook­ies i made in an ear­lier entry. I chose lap­sang tea and jas­mine green tea. I couldn’t decide between the two, so I just went with both. This was either going to ruin the brown­ies or make them a stand­out dessert. It did nei­ther. Lap­sang is such an over­pow­er­ing, smokey fla­vor, that it took over and made the jas­mine unde­tectable. I think I’ve men­tioned before that bak­ing is not me forte. This all starts with a messy cook­ing station.…

Every­thing seemed to be going smoothly. I greased the pyrex and poured in the batter…

Appar­ently I didn’t grease the bot­tom enough…

Luck­ily, some­one who I live with hap­pens to love brownie scraps more so than whole brown­ies in fact. Since I hate waste, I scraped up the bot­tom and tossed them into a recy­cled jar for her to enjoy at her leisure…

My taste-testers did seem to enjoy the smokey after­taste. I think as an after­noon snack on a warm day, it’s a slightly strange com­bi­na­tion. How­ever, with the right glass of red wine, in a warm, cozy restau­rant with an exper­i­men­tal menu, I think these lap­sang brown­ies could be superstars.

Here is Elana’s easy as pie recipe (I added 2 tea bags of lap­sang tea and 5 tea bags of jas­mine green tea. I rec­om­mend one or the other):

1 (16) ounce jar salted almond but­ter, smooth roasted
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups agave nec­tar
1 table­spoon vanilla extract
½ cup cocoa pow­der
½ tea­spoon celtic sea salt
1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
1 cup dark choco­late chips 73% cacao

1. In a large bowl, blend almond but­ter until smooth with a hand blender
2. Blend in eggs, then blend in agave and vanilla
3. Blend in cocoa, salt and bak­ing soda, then fold in choco­late chips
4. Grease a 9 x 13 pyrex bak­ing dish
5. Pour bat­ter into dish
6. Bake at 325° for 35–40 minutes

Makes about 24 brownies