Hi. It’s Saturday and I have a brownie recipe for you! If you are trying to stay away from the sweets this month, don’t freak out. These are healthy-ish coconut oil brownies with an almond butter swirl and they are super delicious.
I say “healthy-ish”, because I don’t like using full-on “healthy” unless it is actually 100% good for you clean eating food. I don’t want to mislead you into thinking they are health food. Afterall, brownies. BUT I took out some bad stuff and added some better stuff and they still taste pretty darn good.
So what makes them “healthy-ish”? I swapped butter for coconut oil, granulated sugar for honey, and all-purpose flour for a combination of almond meal and whole-wheat flour. I also made sure there were no refined sugars. See, not so bad. I based these off of the Blueberry-Mint Brownies that I posted back in August.
Making brownies from scratch may seem intimidating. You guys, it’s not. Yes, it requires a little more effort than boxed brownies, but these are still pretty simple.
Start by combining all the dry ingredients. Then melt the chocolate and the coconut oil (over the stove or in the microwave). Whisk in the honey, then the eggs and vanilla. Fold in the dry ingredients and there you have it: brownie batter.
Anything that takes four short sentences to explain can’t be that complicated. There are, however, more details and more sentences in the full recipe below.
To make these a little more fancy and flavorful I added in some chopped nuts and an almond butter swirl, because life is just better with nuts (and healthy fats). Melt some almond butter with a little bit of honey and swirl it into the brownie batter.
I used almond butter and peanuts, but you can use peanut butter and almonds or peanut butter and peanuts or almond butter and almonds. Or a mix of everything! Choose your own adventure.
I will tell you that these taste better the next day. Have one straight out of the oven, but save the rest for later. Another thing I will tell you is that you could pop these in the oven, clean the dishes, do this 20-minute plyometric tabata, and still have a couple of minutes to spare before pulling them out of the oven. If that’s not perfect, I don’t know what is.
- ½ cup whole wheat flour
- ¼ cup almond meal
- 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey's)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
- ½ cup coconut oil
- ¾ cup + 1 tablespoon honey
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup almond butter
- 1 cup roughly chopped peanuts or almonds (roasted, unsalted)
- Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8x8” baking pan, line with parchment paper, and grease again.
- In a small bowl, combine the flour, almond meal, cocoa, salt, and baking powder.
- In a saucepan on low heat, melt the unsweetened chocolate and coconut oil.
- Whisk in ¾ cup of honey. Let it cool for a few minutes and transfer to a medium bowl.
- Whisk in the eggs and vanilla extract.
- Fold in the dry ingredients until combined.
- Stir in ¾ cup of the nuts. Set aside
- In a saucepan heat up the almond butter and 1 tablespoon of honey until it melts a little bit (this should just take a minute or two). Stir in the remaining ¼ cup of nuts.
- Pour batter into the prepared pan. Add spoons of the almond butter mixture. Run a knife or toothpick through the batter to create a marbled effect.
- Bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting and serving.
You can melt the unsweetened chocolate and coconut oil in the microwave. Just put it in a microwave-safe bowl and stir it every thirty seconds until it is melted. Same goes with the almond butter and honey, which will probably only take 30 seconds. My microwave doesn’t work so I need to use the stove for all of this.
So there you have it. No blood. No sweat. No tears. No guilt. Just love, some better-for-you ingredients, and delicious brownies. Hurray!
