These are my favorite Brownies, until I find new favorite Brownies (wink). But seriously, the flavor of these little guys is amazing. The tiger nut flour gives it an amazing bite and I am super excited to share the recipe with you. Having grown up in Spain, I have known tiger nuts all my life for making Horchata, but never knew they were also used as flour in baking. The crazy thing is that I found out about it in Germany out of all places. A lady in a shop told me, so I had to buy it straight away. After some research I came up with this…

Tiger nuts have various uses; in particular, they are used in Spain to make horchata.

Tigernuts are also said to act as a mild appetite suppressant because they contain resistant starch, a type of starch which resists digestion.

This helps keep us feeling fuller for longer, and also reduces the amount of calories we absorb from the food. Hola…would you like me to say that again?

Flour of roasted tiger nuts is used in baking as well as in making oil, soap, and starch extracts. It is also used for the production of nougat, jam, beer, and as a flavoring agent in ice cream and in the preparation of kunnu (a local beverage in Nigeria). Tiger nut oil can be used naturally with salads or for deep frying. It is considered to be a high quality oil.

Known by different names, such as chufa sedge, nut grass, yellow nut sedge, tiger nut sedge, edible galingale, water grass or earth almond, it is a crop widespread across much of the world. It is found in most of southern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Since I am mad about Brownies I am constantly trying to come up with ways to make them delicious and heathy but still with the right consistency, which is half cakey/half fudgy. I have used a combo of both coconut flour and tiger nut flour and they are just perfect. We have been eating them a lot lately, since they are actually good for you and so simple to make.

Prep Time : 5 mins
Cook Time : 25 mins
Total Time : 30 mins

Servings: 16 or 9 big ones

Ingredients:

•  250 gr. Black Beans, drained
• 2 tsp. Vanilla
•  2 L. Eggs, room temperature
•  1/2 C. Cocoa
•  3 tbsp. Tiger nut flour
•  4 tbsp. coconut flour (finely ground)
•  1 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
•  a pinch of salt
•  3 – 4 tbsp. milk of choice, unsweetened
•  1/4 C. unsweetened apple sauce* (see note)
•  2 tsp. Liquid Stevia Extract* (see note)
•  1/4 C. mild flavoured olive oil
• 1/3 C. 70% Dark Chocolate, roughy chopped**
• chopped walnuts, (optional)

Instructions:

1. Pre heat oven to 180 C / 350 F.
2. Line a square 20 cm / 8 ” baking tin with parchment paper.
3. Start by blending the drained black beans with the apple sauce in a food processor until very creamy and smooth.
4. Add all the remaining ingredients except the chocolate chips and walnuts.
5. Start with 3 tablespoons of milk and see if you need the remaining one. It should be thick but still pourable.
6. Blend for a few minutes until completely smooth.
7. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts if you are using them, and pour into the prepared baking tin.
8. Sprinkle with some more chocolate and/or walnuts.
9. Place on a rack in the middle of the oven and bake for about 25 minutes.
10. You can insert a wooden skewer to test if they are done, it should come out just dry.
11. Remove from oven and let cool for at least 20 minutes in the tin.
12. Remove from the tin and let cool completely on a rack before cutting, the colder the better.
13. Will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days. They freeze well too.

Myra XO

* Replace apple sauce and stevia for same amount of maple syrup.
**Chocolate chunks will first melt, but once the brownies have cooled the chocolate will solidify, giving you great chunks. So yummy.

Nutritional value
Despite its name, tiger nut sedge is a tuber. However, its chemical composition shares characteristics with tubers and with nuts. It has been reported to be a “health” food, since its consumption can help prevent heart disease and thrombosis and is said to activate blood circulation and reduce the risk of colon cancer This tuber is rich in energy content (starch, fat, sugar, and protein), minerals (mainly ), phosphorus and potassium and vitamins E and C. Tiger nut tubers contain almost twice the quantity of starch as potato or sweet potato tubers. The oil of the tuber was found to contain 18% saturated (palmitic acid and stearic acid) and 82% unsaturated (oleic acid and linoleic acid) fatty acids. The moderately high content of phytosterols further enriches the quality and value of tiger nut oil as a food source.