There's A Cucumber In My Brownie!

With all the juicing I have been doing, the question of what to do with all the leftover pulp has been weighing on my mind. Currently, most of the pulp is going into my compost pile. That's great, but I still felt that I could use the pulp for something we could eat.
If you have ever seen the book Deceptively Delicious then you are familiar with the idea of using vegetable puree in baked goods.















I tried several of the recipes from the book and my kids could always detect that something was "weird". However, that was several years ago so I decided it was time to give it another try, this time using the pulp from my juicing.
First, I made my juice for the day. This one has Cucumber, radish, cabbage, carrot, apple, beet, lemon and spinach (YUM!).
This is what was left.

Hmm, doesn't look so good, does it?

I tossed it in the vitamix blender with some water. The amount of water will vary depending on how wet the pulp is, but you are aiming for an applesauce texture.

This is after the trip through the blender.

Simply use this puree in place of the butter called for in any brownie recipe. Or you could try replacing 1/2 the butter at first. I went for full replacement.

This was the result

What did my kids think? Well, my daughter doesn't like brownies at all so she didn't want anything to do with them. My son? The little turkey could spot it a mile away, he wanted to know "what weird ingredient did you try?) !!
I thought they were really good. The only thing I would change is that I lowered the amount of sugar in the recipe and next time I would use the full amount. I compensated this time with the powdered sugar on top.
I will WARN you though. DO NOT attempt to eat these warm, they are hideous. I am not kidding here. I thought the whole batch was heading for the trash. After they cooled, the chocolate flavor came through and they were great.

Enjoy!

Ice cream!

We started this journey of GF/CF eating about six months ago. Since then, we have tried many, many types of non-dairy "ice cream". Some have been store bought. Some were home-made. There was always something we didn't like, sometimes texture related, being more "ice" than "cream". Sometimes they simply didn't taste good. I for one really enjoy the Purely Decadent peanut butter swirl but it is expensive and no one else in the house likes it.

So I was hesitant as I tried yet another home-made recipe. This one was different in that it called for marshmallows. My family loves marshmallows so why not? It is also the least expensive version I have tried.

It was FANTASTIC!!

It's ultra sweet so I toned it down with the dark chocolate syrup and the ice cream hardened in the freezer to the point that I thought it would be like all the others. A quick zap on defrost in the microwave helped it out. The texture remained creamy!
If you want to try the recipe you can find it here
This one got four thumbs up in our house. My daughter has asked that I try to make it with mint and my son is voting for me to use it in a home-made version of an Oreo Brownie Earthquake (his favorite from Dairy Queen). I vote for peanut butter swirl!

Enjoy!