Sheila G's Brownie Brittle

Have you ever found yourself nibbling on the crispy bits of brownie clinging to the pan after you've served up a fresh batch from the oven? Sheila G has. In fact, this is her favorite part of the brownie, so she decided to make a line of snacks specifically created to taste like those crunchy morsels there never seems to be enough of.

Brownie Brittle, as she calls it, comes in four flavors: Chocolate Chip, Mint Chocolate Chip, Toffee Crunch, and Salted Caramel. They're cracker thin and roughly square shaped, but tend to break apart into smaller pieces in the bag, much like real brittle. Despite their diminutive snack size, Brownie Brittle is intensely chocolate flavored so you won't need to eat too many to feel satisfied.

The Chocolate Chip flavor is the most reminiscent of a traditional brownie, but the crispy texture might also give you nostalgic memories of eating Coco Pebbles while watching cartoons on TV. The Toffee Crunch is also quite good with just enough toffee to give you the flavor without getting unwanted bits of gooey sugar stuck in your teeth. Salted Caramel is a hot flavor right now, so it's no surprise that Sheila G has a version of it. I just wish it had a tad more salt to drive home the contrast with the caramel.

After an unfortunate childhood incident where I ate a half gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream by myself and got sick, I've never been a fan of that flavor combination. However, in the interest of thorough reporting, I sampled the mint chocolate chip Brownie Brittle. To my relief, the mint is fairly subtle, providing a touch of refreshing support to the rich chocolate flavor. I could actually eat a few of these without any bad flashbacks. For mint and chocolate lovers, I'm sure this would be a favorite.

Sheila G's Brownie Brittle allows you to enjoy the flavors of a brownie with far fewer calories than eating a whole brownie square. In fact, a 1-ounce serving has only 120 calories. So if you go hog wild and eat the whole 5-serving bag, well, at least you'll still have a couple of calories left in your daily allowance for some vegetables. You know, for balance.

Later this year, Brownie Brittle will be available with holiday decorations. The mint, chocolate chip, and salted caramel versions will each have a chocolaty drizzle on top, to make them a little more festive.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rocco's Beany Cookies

Coprolite or fossilized dung.
Sure looks like a cookie though, doesn't it?

Not content with bastardizing the luscious chocolate confection known to chocoholics everywhere as brownies, Rocco DiSpirito also felt the need to taint the recipe for another sweet favorite - the chocolate chip cookie. He claims to have taken three whole weeks to perfect this noxious combination of beans and three forms of chocolate; perhaps if he had taken another few days he would have realized that he's off his rocker.

Unlike the bean brownie recipe, I feel no need to test this recipe out on my own. Besides, there are other brave souls who have done the job for me:

I made these this evening and the picture is certainly are not the cookies in this recipe. The first batch was so bad I tried again thinking I made a mistake. The second batch was just as bad as the first. They have a poor consistancy, flat, rubbery, way to sweet and have that splenda after taste which is even worse when the flavor is bad to begin with. Please do not waste time and money on this recipe!!!

I tried the chocolate chip cookie recipe last night. They did not look like the picture, and they definitely did not taste like chocolate chip cookies. I am disappointed that I spent so much money on the strange ingredients and time in the kitchen just to throw away cookies.

If you're crazy enough to try them, here's the recipe.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe from Now Eat This! by Rocco DiSpirito
Servings: Makes 20 cookies

Nonstick cooking spray
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 cup canned white cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
2 Tbsp. light agave syrup
3 large egg whites
1 1/2 cups granulated Splenda
1/4 cup dark chocolate-covered cacao nibs
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375°. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and spray lightly with cooking spray. Set aside.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine vanilla, cocoa, cannellini beans, and the agave syrup, and blend the mixture until smooth, about 3 minutes, scraping down the side of the bowl halfway through blending.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whip attachment, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Gradually beat in the Splenda. Continue to beat the whites until they are creamy and nearly stiff. Add one-third of the egg- white mixture to the cocoabean mixture in the food processor. Blend to combine, about 30 seconds. In 2 batches, fold the lightened cocoa mixture into the egg whites until they are almost fully combined. Add cacao nibs to the batter. Fold batter until cacao nibs are evenly dispersed and cocoa mixture is completely incorporated.

Drop mounded spoonfuls of batter onto the prepared sheets. Spread batter out to form cookies about 2½ inches in diameter. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the cookies.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotating the pans one turn halfway through baking. Using a metal spatula, transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

A Letter to Rocco DiSpirito

Dear Rocco,

Once upon a time, I liked and respected you. Not because you were tall, dark, and handsome (although that helped), but because you were a talented chef with a seemingly long and bright future. Reading about your innovative and interesting food at Union Pacific made me want to dine there, particularly after New York Magazine labeled it "pure genius."

Unfortunately for you, genius is often not enough to sustain a career. Especially when big egos and bad business deals led to an NBC reality series and your ultimate demise--on national television, no less--in the restaurant industry; now you must make a living hawking cat food, frozen meatballs, and cookbooks. Your first book, the aptly titled Flavor, won you a James Beard Award just as your reputation was going down the crapper. I thought, "well, maybe his ego hasn't gotten so large that it squeezed out any remnants of 'genius.'" But then you decided to "get fit," which most people believe is a euphemism, in your case, for "plastic surgery." This new obsession with weight loss has driven you to create a new cookbook full of "low-cal" recipes. Rather than preaching the all-important portion control, you have jumped on the ingredient substitution bandwagon.

I've never believed in that approach. It's better to eat nothing at all than to ingest a pale imitation of the real thing. Wheat gluten will never be chicken, hydrogenated vegetable oil will never be butter, and Velveeta will never be cheese. Likewise, black beans will never be moist, chocolate-flavored cake. And to prove that, I've taken it upon myself to make your 53-calorie brownies, which are brownies in name only. They are, indeed, brown.

But before I got to baking, I had to go shopping.

Let's assume I have a normally stocked pantry, one that includes butter, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, vanilla, leavening agents, and cocoa powder. Let's look at what additional ingredients I had to buy to make these brownies.

$4.49 Medaglia D'Oro instant espresso
$2.49 Egg substitute
$1.78 2 cans black beans
$3.69 Walden Farms chocolate syrup
$4.19 small box of Truvia
$1.49 small sour cream
--------
$18.13 total

Let's compare this to what I have to buy to make the recipe I normally use:

$5.95 Ghirardelli Sweet Chocolate and Cocoa

--------

$5.95 total

So for $18, these should be some fabulous brownies, right? A box of Barefoot Contessa brownie mix costs about $8, and I hear those are pretty damn good.

Shopping was annoying enough, but then there was the matter of equipment. To make the Ghirardelli brownies, I dump everything in one bowl, stir, and pour into a baking dish. But for your low-cal brownies, I had to drag out the food processor, because unlike butter and sugar, black beans do not meld easily with other ingredients.

After everything was blended to a fair-thee-well, I must admit the runny batter did at least smell very chocolatey. This sparked a little hope and soon I was farting in anticipation to taste these beany treats. But first, the baking.

I had to increase the baking time to 38 minutes, as a mere thirty minutes left a toothpick covered with goo. And here's the result:

Beautiful, no? I'm going to say "no."

After waiting for the brownies to cool down completely, I cut them into 12 pieces. They were not-ungenerously sized.
Actually, the pieces were too generous. One bite was more than enough.

How do I describe them? Hmm...well, the flavor was predominately coffee, with a soupçon of bean. On the positive side, they didn't taste as artificial as I expected, but there was a slightly bitter aftertaste from the sweetener.
One of the joys of a good brownie is the contrast between crisp crust and either moistly chewy or cakey insides. These brownies, as one can see from the photo, were singularly smooth throughout, almost fudgelike, with small bits of bean skin adding the only texture. There was also a bizarre moist-yet-dry-ness to them. The only thing to which I can compare the texture is a mouthful of cold refried beans.

I did discover one way to make these brownies more palatable.

The cold creaminess of the ice cream and the sweetness of the dulce de leche added interest, not to mention flavor. A sprinkle of chopped nuts would have been nice too, for much-needed texture.

Overall, I will admit that I am not surprised at the result of this baking experiment. I did not expect them to taste good, or for them to fool me into thinking I was eating an actual brownie. Nor have they done anything to elevate you in my eyes, Rocco. In fact, I'm not sure you could sink any lower, culinarily. However, I am sure you will have much support from the hordes of drooling sycophants who still find you physically attractive and will put anything in their mouths as long as it has some connection to you.

With respect disgust,

theminx

Why Should I Eat This?

I just saw this on Facebook:

What? Someone honestly thinks they can futz around with good old-fashioned, fat-laden recipes and make them low-calorie? Can they possibly taste good? Exactly how big is a 43-calorie brownie?

Seriously, how can we trust a chef who uses jarred apples in a recipe for apple crisp?

Will you buy this book?