Raw Superfood Brownies with Avocado Buttercream

First, the good news.

Raw brownies, people! As in no-bake, chewy chocolate goodness, chock full of protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals galore, all decked out in a bombastic blanket of chocolatey ganache decadent enough to mimic a classic butter-cream (no lie).

Now, for the bad news.

Raw brownies, people. As in no-bake, chewy chocolate goodness, but with NO white flour. NO eggs. NO butter. Very, very little sugar. So really…..nothing anywhere close to what you might be used to if the brownies in your world equal perhaps ….. Betty Crocker’s. Or your mom’s. Or these beauties (which look AMAZING, btw).

What I guess I’m trying to say here, is that these might not be for everyone.  

But I LOVE LOVE LOVE ’em, and if you’re trying to cut back on your sugar, while keeping the goodies…you just might too.

Dense, dark and sticky, loaded with crunchy nuts and slathered in a luscious fudgie frosting, these are the perfect nibble if you want to wrangle your sweet tooth and treat yourself to something with some serious nutritional sway.  We’ve got omega 3 fatty acids,  We’ve got manganese and copper,  We’ve got antioxidants,  We’ve got soluble fibers….We’ve even got my personal favorite polyphenol, lignans (doesn’t everyone have their own favorite plant-based chemical compound?), among other things.

What we don’t have is any need to turn on the oven. Let’s make some brownies!

Begin by pitting 4 large medjool dates, and squishing them down into a measuring cup. You’ll add water up to the 1/2 cup mark, and let those soak for at least 15 minutes, up to overnight if you’d like. Gather up the remainder of your ingredients. You’ll need some cacao powder, almond butter, vanilla extract, coconut oil, walnuts, ground flaxseed and ground oatmeal.

Get out your Nutribullet or blender (a Vitamix is great for this) to pulverize your (flax)seeds and oatmeal into powders………….then put it away! You’ll be needing your food processor for the heavy lifting.

Everybody into the pool! Except leave the walnuts out for now……..and give it all a good pulse, pulse, pulse, and then let her roll. Your “batter” may end up crumbly or super sticky; this can depend on the size of the dates, the texture of your nut butter brand….even the humidity, but don’t you worry…….it will all turn out either way. I promise!

Now’s the time to toss in those walnuts. Just give this a couple of pulses to coarsely chop them in….

then tip the lot of it all into a 9×9 inch baking pan that you’ve lined with foil. Make sure to let that hang over the sides while you’re at it, for easy lift out later.

Press everything down into a nice even layer. I actually used a paper towel to help me with that. No sticking at all and it picked up some excess coconut oil so I thought that was a plus. Set this off for now……because it’s time to make that amazing topping.

Yes I cheated a little here because not only is there no butter in what I am calling a buttercream, there is a little bit of actual sugar. Yeah, sorry about that.

But not too sorry!  Melt 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips in a small glass bowl…..

then add one ripe avocado, along with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Don’t even TRY to manhandle this, get out your hand-held beaters and whiz this together until the avocado is super smooth and incorporated into that lovely brown pool. Beat this until it is light and fluffy and you just want to do a face plant into it.

Smooth that luscious luxuriousness evenly onto the brownie layer. You’ll still see a few tiny green flecks of avocado here and there, but not to worry……we will cover those up soon enough.

Whip this into the freezer for an hour of chill down time,

and once everything is nicely firmed up, use the tin foil to very easily pull the whole thing out of the pan, and out onto a cutting board.

You can hack these babies up any way you like…..into 16 squares…..or a more petite 24 squares. I like to cut it down the middle and then 12 on one side and 8 on the other.  

You know…..portion control.       HA!

Give these brown beauties a dusting of course salt to A/accentuate the subtle sweetness and B/sorta camouflage the specks of avocado. Win win win. (Keep in mind that if your almond butter of choice was of the salted persuasion to begin with….this may not be something you want to do; too much salt. If your AB (like mine) contains no added salt – then sprinkle away!)

Oh great gawd these are so good. Store ’em in the fridge, but they are at their best out of the chill for a few minutes, to aaaaallmost room temp (that way your taste buds have a chance to catch the subtle sweetness, and the texture is perfect). Hardworking nutrition all dressed up like a frosted brownie? What a great time to be alive. Super yum.

RECIPE BELOW: These truly take minutes to mix together…..the sticky food processor will take you longer to clean and I am not even joking. Makes as many as 24 or as few as 4 (if you’re me) depending on how you slice ’em. After the initial freeze time, keep them stored covered in the refrigerator, they get even better the next day. For real! These may be an acquired taste if you are generally a super gummy bear loving sweet tooth… BUT –  if you like dark chocolate and consider yourself a “super taster“, these just might be for you.