Chocolate Covered Katie

Today I am thankful for Chocolate Covered Katie and her dedication to making healthy version of tasty recipes.  Her recipes are all vegan and some are gluten free or meet other special dietary requirements.

Here is a link to black bean brownies that you would not believe have black beans in them (assuming that you rinse the black beans well and have a good food processor).  My girls and even my niece, the Drama Princess, who is extremely picky love them.  I made them a few times with the maple sugar sweetening option of 1/2 cup maple syrup and I thought they were too sweet, but the girls loved them and the babysitter also really liked them.  Even Q, who doesn't eat beans at all, tried a piece and said they were good.  The last time I made them, I only used 1/3 cup maple syrup and I thought they were perfect and my girls and the Drama Princess all still enjoyed them.

Q's favorite type of pie is chocolate silk pie.  He'll even be somewhat happy if I just serve him chocolate pudding in a pie crust with whipped cream.  Chocolate Covered Katie has a recipe for chocolate bar pie that has made up both really happy.

If you compare the nutritional information of her version of these versus the typical recipe, you will wonder at the fact that that sort of difference is even possible.  There have been a few recipes that I haven't cared for, not because they weren't tasty, but because the texture was off (not the two above).  I really haven't tried that many, but I plan too, and she is constantly putting up recipes that make me want to go shopping for ingredients and try them that second.

I do want to tell you that I only use traditional sweeteners and not stevia or agave syrup in anything that I give to my girls, which she uses in a lot of her recipes.  I don't use stevia because of the concern of fertility issues and I don't use agave because of the possibility of worse blood sugar problems than traditional sweeteners in the product when the concentration is so unregulated and I had gestational diabetes with all three of my pregnancies.