These Dairy Free Brownies are simple to make, naturally sweetened, high in fibre, moist, chewy and just perfect with a cup of coffee in the morning, or as an after dinner snack to keep cravings at bay.

a stack of three dairy free brownies on a green plate

Recipe Highlights

These brownies are high in fibre so they'll keep you fuller for longer. Instead of flour, they contain black beans but you wouldn't know it
Just the right amount of sweetness. Perfect if you find regular brownies overly sweet or sickly. These are sweetened with dates and a little monkfruit sweetener.
They’re fudgy, rich, tender, moist, quick and easy, delicious and won’t spike your sugar levels.
Can you taste the blackbeans? There is so much chocolate flavour in these brownies not only can you not taste black beans, you can't even see them.

I absolutely love baking with blackbeans because they create a deliciously moist baked good, they much more filling than flour baked goods and a whole lot healthier. Check out my Black Bean Chocolate Cake here.

Not a fan of Black Beans? You might like my 7 Ingredient Chocolate Banana Brownies, and they are dairy free and sugar free too!

Ingredient Notes

The Chocolate: For this recipe, I used unsweetened cocoa powder. This is different to the regular drinking cocoa powder in the tea and coffee aisle as this often contains sweetener of one variety or another. Unsweetened cocoa powder provides a rich chocolate flavour and is available from the health food aisle of most supermarkets.

The Black Beans: The easiest way is to use black beans in a can. They are already precooked and all you have to do is drain all the liquid off and wash them in a strainer.

The Sweetener: I used a combination of medjool dates and Lakanto Monkfruit Sweetener which measures like sugar. The combination of both means I get the nice rich taste associated with the medjool dates, and keep the calories lower thanks to the Low GI Monkfruit sweetener

The Fat: Instead of butter and to keep the recipe dairy free, I used coconut oil which provides a good level of moisture and helps to create the right consistency of the brownie, not to cakey, and not to gooey

The Flavour: The flavour is everything. Why make a blackbean brownie that’s going to taste ordinary, you need to make one that is bursting with flavours and this is achieved with a combination of sugar free peanut butter, ground cinnamon, vanilla, and the dates

How To Make

Drain and rinse the black beans.
Add all ingredients to a food processor, and blitz for a couple minutes until all combined and smooth batter has formed.
Line a large loaf tin with baking paper and spoon out brownie mixture, patting down with the back of a spoon
Bake for 23 minutes in a fan oven at 170 degrees C/340 degrees F. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 to 10 minutes
Slice into 8 equal portions. Cover and let brownies come to room temperature
Dust with unsweetened cocoa powder, store in an air tight container in the fridge for upto 5 days.

Customisations and Variations

Nuts: Add walnuts or pecans to the batter
Seeds: Sprinkle pumpkin seeds on top before baking
Spices: Swap out the cinnamon, for ground ginger, or nutmeg.
Nut Butters: Instead of sugar free peanut butter, try cashew nut butter, or almond butter
Extra Rich: Why not add some finely chopped sugar free chocolate into the batter for an extra level of gooey goodness. Or add tablespoon of espresso coffee to the batter.
Tropical: Sprinkle a little unsweetened desiccated coconut over the top of the brownies before you put them into the oven to bake.
Make it Savoury: Add a sprinkle of sea salt over the top before serving, or alternatively, if you like things a little spicy, add a tiny sprinkling (think ¼ teaspoon) of dried chilli powder – either stirred through the batter before you put it into the baking tin, or after it has cooked

Expert Tips

To make this recipe, you’ll need a food processor to blitz up the black beans. If you don’t have this, you could use a mortar and pestle or hand held blender, it will just be a bit more of a workout.

Dish: I used a rectangle metal loaf tin 30 cm x 15 cm (12 inch x 6 inch). This makes 8 generous sized squares.
Cooking Time: These healthy brownies take 20 to 25 minutes at 170 degrees C or 340 degrees F to cook perfectly. I personally cooked this recipe for 23 minutes in a fan oven and it was spot on
Is it Done: To test if your dairy free brownies are cooked to perfection, pop in a cake skewer or toothpick and if it comes out a little dirty, you’re all good. If it comes out a lot dirty, it needs more time.
Storage: Store these babies in the fridge in an air tight container for a week – if they last that long that is.
Freezing: Yep, they’ll freeze up pretty well. Slice them up, pop them into some Ziplock bags, name and date the bag and they keep for 4 weeks. When you’re ready, defrost at room temperature before eating.
Serving: with sugar free vanilla ice cream, or sugar free custard, raspberries, or double cream.

The funny thing is, I’ve tried brownies in the past and never really enjoyed them because they were way too sweet. But I love chocolate, so I wanted to create a healthy blackbean brownie recipe that had just enough sweetness, was filling, free from refined sugars and was super easy to make. This is it.

Not too sweet dairy free brownies, that you can make in under 30 minutes, that you can enjoy all week with your morning coffee.

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Jaimie

May 30, 2020 at 1:27 pm