Chocolate "Trust Me" Black Bean Fudge

This is a recipe that requires a special title. Tell someone you made black bean fudge and they're probably going to go Mr. Yuck on you and totally shoot it down. So, you know, trust me. It's fucking awesome.

This fudge contains no dairy. It contains two cans of black beans. It's high-fiber, high-protein, dairy-free and a great, nay, excellent source of coconut oil fats.

Chocolate "Trust Me" Black Bean Fudge
(adapted from Whole New Mom)

• 2 cans of black beans (rinsed), or 3.5 cups of cooked black beans
• 3/4 cup of coconut oil
• 1 cup of cocoa powder
• 1 cup of sugar (can be reduced to your preferences)
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt (to taste)

Blend all the ingredients in your blender, Nutribullet or Vitamix.

Pour into a bowl and chill for at least two hours (longer if your coconut oil is liquid when you started).

 The mixture will be pretty hard (think soft fudge or chocolate icing). 

Sriracha Hummus (light)

When I donate blood, at least a fourth of it is extra virgin sriracha. Obviously, I'm going to make sriracha hummus. I make sriracha everything.

For this recipe, you will need 3 cups of garbanzo beans (see here for my suggestion about using dried beans over canned). Then most of the usual hummus suspects. Sriracha (duh). Aaaand the secret to it being light? Greek yogurt.

So before we get started let me tell you that hummus is not low fat. Much of its fat comes from the tahini and olive oil. For my recipe we are going to swap out about half the lipids in favor of fat-free Greek yogurt (we're talking about cutting out 28 grams of fat or about 250 calories). I don't miss it and I've forced others to eat this and no one has ever noticed.

Sriracha Hummus
(Modified from here)

3 cups chickpeas
2-4 tbsp. Sriracha sauce (I would use ten but I'm superhuman)
1-2 tbsp. Olive oil
1 tbsp. Peanut butter
2 tbsp. Greek yogurt
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp. Minced garlic
1/2 tsp. Cumin
Sea salt to taste

Again, puree this all until it looks like you pureed a bunch of crap. Then if you're like me, serve half of it to others and reserve the other half to put more sriracha in because your friends are weak.

Coffee Cake Hummus

I had the realization this afternoon that chickpeas are probably so-called because they resemble tiny roasted chickens after they have soaked. See?

Have you ever made this connection? I haven't until today and my mind is still reeling.

Ok, so in honor of my discovery, I'm going to throw at you an experiment. This experiment is titled Coffee Cake Hummus. Traditionally, hummus is made from pureed chickpeas and a paste made from sesame seeds called tahini. Usually, it's flavored with savory spices and you see combos of pre-packaged hummus flavored with things like roasted red pepper or lemon garlic. You don't see sweet hummus, though. Which I have always thought kind of weird, because chickpeas and other light-colored beans are pretty flavor neutral. Mixed with peanut, almond or cashew butter, you'd have a pretty solid base for almost any mix-in. 

I researched dessert hummuses and discovered a sort of cottage industry of food bloggers inventing their own nut-based hummus recipes. The recipe I'm modifying today is Chocolate Covered Katie's recipe for Snickerdoodle Dip. There are no major complaints with her recipe as is, except I'm not going to use canned beans (which means less salt), I'm going to tweak a few basic ingredients and I'm going to omit baking soda (the extra sodium doesn't seem to be necessary).

In order to make this recipe, I strongly recommend buying a package of dried chickpeas and soaking them ahead of time. A bag of dried garbanzo beans costs $1.29 here in Somerville and makes about 5-6 cups prepared (or the equivalent of 3 cans).

Cover them with water overnight in a bowl in your fridge. They will pretty much triple in size as they rehydrate, so make sure you leave lots of room and use lots of water--more than you think they can use. Then rinse them off, covering them with fresh water in a large stock pot. Then boil according to the directions on the back of the bag (Or until they're tender. This isn't rocket science.) 

Coffee Cake Hummus

3 cups of prepared beans

1 half of a small apple, diced (or use 1 tbs. applesauce)

3 tbs. cashew butter (or peanut butter. Or almond butter. It all tastes fine.)

1/2 to 3/4 cup amber honey

2 tsp. vanilla extract 

3 tsp. cinnamon

pinch of sea salt

Basically, you dump all of this in a food processor and blend. I don't have a food processor. I have a food-processor-like attachment that came with my blender. It works fine. Me being single, I don't have the fancy-ass kitchen equipment people give you when you get married that ends up on top of the kitchen cabinets alongside the crepe-maker and the fondue set you registered for during your pre-matrimonial powertrip. Yeah, you know who you are. Or at least I know who you are.

I'd take a picture of this, but it's not photogenic. It's brown. Whatever.

You eat this with apple slices. And your fingers. I promise to keep working with this base recipe. It's good now and a lot better for you compared to, say, eating frosting out of a can. It's like high-fiber nature frosting you eat out of a blender, which I console myself is better than that incipient drinking problem that creeps up behind me every few weeks and whispers, "'sup?"