Shockingly good actually, but I didn’t want to make that the title. It seemed a bit presumptuous.
These are part of my ‘Cooking Up My Bookmarks’ mission. It’s going well so far.
These are date brownies. They aren’t called date brownies because eating a lot of them will get you a date (they wont, I’ve tried) , but because they have lots of dates in them. AND WE ALL KNOW, dates really rule when it comes to sweet things #datesquares #stickytoffeepudding.
I love brownies. They have to be really fudgy and sickly. And chocolately. My mum makes amazing brownies, and I always swore that she did. But then my friend made these even more amazing brownies with melted chocolate. They were nice.
They reinstated a love of brownies in me, and so, to make brownies REALLY EXCITING, I wanted to make a healthy recipe for them…party at my house.
How are these made healthy? Well, they don’t have butter, sugar, eggs or flour in them. DAT’S RIGHT. They have pearl barley flour in them, this is made by grinding pearl barley. This did mean that there were bits of pearl barley in the brownies, but they were edible and I’m fine 12 hours later. So hey, it’s okay! By the way, a food processor is necessary.
So what do they actually taste like? OMIGOD, they taste so good. I was so dubious, but these are rich, and gooey and very chocolately. The texture is very dense, and the flavour is nutty and chocolatey, a bit like a Kinder Bueno.
Just taking this opportunity to plug my twitter account again, @jes_sca (or see the side bar).
Ingredients- Cooking THIS but with a lot of variation
-1 cup of dates
-3/4 boiling water
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1/4 cup of pearl barley flour (process barley)
-1/4 mix of hazlenuts and almonds
-1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
-1/2 cup cocoa powder
-1/4 cup of coconut oil, melted
-1/4 dessicated coconut (optional)
-1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
-1/4 cup peanut butter
Method
-Preheat oven to gas mark 5/370f/190 c. Grease a rounded cake tin, or a 5″ x 5″ tin, or any sort of tin you have.
-In a bowl, pour the hot water and vanilla essence over the dates and set aside.
-In a food processor, process the pearl barley and nuts for as long as possible. It should be very finely processed, but there will be some bits of pearl barley that don’t get processed. Seive the mixture into another bowl, you basically want to get rid of all the whole bits of barley, and set aside.
-To this mixture add the cocoa powder, coconut oil, dessicated coconut and baking powder.
-Get your date mixture, and put into the food processor. Process for about 1 minute until the mixture is paste-like .
-Add the cocoa mixture and the peanut butter to the paste-mixture and process until everything is well-combined.
-Pour the batter into cake tin and cook for an 45 mins-hour. They are ready when the top of the brownies is very firm and when you poke a knife through it, it comes out clean.
-Leave to cool before cutting. And eating.
These look SO good! Love the thrifty foodie angle – it’s right up my alley!
they look really good!! i dont have pearl barley, but i’m excited to try these!
These look great! I don’t have any of the barley on hand… Do you think subbing in almond flour would still taste good?
Hi Jillian, yes almond flour would be even better! I just wanted it to be on the cheaper side, that’s why i contributed pearl barley!
These look awesome!! Do you think almond flour would sub in ok for the barley?
Just in the process of baking now, I used pistachio and walnut as they were the only nuts I had on hand I also added some finely shaved pear…. Oh and spelt flour I can’t eat barley …. Wish me luck
oohhh pistachio would be great, and definitely walnut! im planning on making a walnut chocolate cake for christmas, using walnut flour instead! Good luck! x