I’ve been wanting to try avocado brownies for a long time and found this recipe from http://cleananddelicious.com/2016/03/13/double-chocolate-avocado-brownies/.
They are very tasty! As with treats, enjoy in moderation as there is still sugar, but they are not nearly as bad for you as traditional brownies.
Ingredients:
- 1 large avocado
- 1/2 cup mashed banana 1/2 cup maple syrup {I used honey}
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/3 cup chocolate chips {I used dark chocolate chips}
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 and grease an 8×8” baking dish.
- In a food processor or blender, combine; avocado, banana, maple syrup, and vanilla.
- Transfer to a large bowl and add in eggs, coconut flour, cocoa powder, sea salt, and baking soda until combined.
- Pour mixture into the greased baking dish and sprinkle with chocolate chips.
- Bake for about 25 minutes.
- A Note About Sugar Content and GI:
Eating things with low glycemic index is important to both people with PCOS and diabetics. When a food has a lower GI, it means that the sugar is released into your bloodstream more slowly so you won’t have a severe sugar spike. Sugar spikes are something you want to avoid when you have PCOS. Low GI is 55 and below, moderate is 55 to 70 and high is 70 or over.
I used honey instead of maple syrup. Honestly, at first it was because I didn’t have enough syrup, but did you know that honey has a lower GI than syrup? Honey is 30, while maple syrup is 54!
Bananas aren’t something you want to eat a ton of during the day. They do have a lot of sugar, but they are also still considered a low GI food at 51.
I used Nestle dark chocolate chips. I’m currently looking for a better, but still affordable, alternative as those have a good amount of sugar in them. Dark chocolate on the whole is lower GI, but ideally you want it at least in the 60-70% range. The Nestle ones are 53% cacao.
Although I looked at each GI separately, the glycemic load would be considered all of the ingredients together. This is something you can calculate. Depending on what you’re eating together, this can change how quickly sugar is released into your bloodstream. This is the reason that we’re told always to eat a protein with a carb. The protein will help slow down the release of sugar.
From Everyday Health:
“To find a food’s GL, multiply its GI by the number of carbohydrate grams in a serving, and then divide by 100. A low GL is between 1 and 10; a moderate GL is 11 to 19; and a high GL is 20 or higher. For those with diabetes, you want your diet to have GL values as low as possible.”
Any Recipe Difficulties?
The only issue I really had was that I mixed the avocado, honey, banana and vanilla using a nutribullet. It got pretty thick and sticky. I do wonder if the maple syrup would have thinned it out or if a blender would have worked better. It still mixed okay and the brownies were delicious! They turned out a bit more cake-like than traditional brownies, but the taste is great.
Nutrition as calculated from MyFitnessPal-Makes 9 servings {using the honey and Nestle dark chocolate chips as indicated above}:
- Calories: 205
- Fat: 8.5 g
- Saturated: 2.2g
- Polyunsaturated: 0.6g
- Monounsaturated: 2.4g
- Trans: 0
- Cholesterol: 62.0mg
- Sodium: 228.8mg
- Potassium: 229.7mg
- Carbohydrates: 30.9g
- Dietary Fiber: 5.5g
- Sugars: 17.8g
- Protein: 4.4g