Vegan Brownies are Salad Too

Sometimes you just get hit by a sugar craving on a Saturday night.  Last night we decided that shortbread cookies were a little too fancy and out-of-reach, even though we had all of the ingredients.  Instead, we decided to go with an old-fashioned American favorite: the chocolate brownie.  Except we were rolling vegan-style.

Our favorite brownie recipe comes from Vegan Cookies Take Over Your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.  Strangely, it starts out with some silken tofu in a blender and creates a creamy white sugary delicious mess.

Since we didn't really think this culinary adventure through, part-way into the recipe we realized that we didn't have enough cocoa powder to make it all the way to 1/2 a cup.  Instead, we decided to substitute some plain dark chocolate we had in the cabinet from our last trip to The Candy House in Davis.  Some random website suggested that we substitute 1 oz of chocolate for 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder.

 The chocolate mixed in pretty well and gave the batter an amazing texture.  It was hard to stop eating it long enough to stick it in the oven.  While we were waiting on our main course to finish baking, we decided to use up some our lettuce mountain.  Lately our CSA has been producing crazy quantities of gorgeous romaine and red-leaf lettuce - so much so that it's been a challenge for us to consume it all.  We put some of it to good use by making lettuce wraps with hummus, grilled veggies, and a precious out-of-season red bell pepper that we scored at Trader Joes.

 The lettuce wraps were a welcome diversion to distract us from the sweet, chocolately smell that was invading our kitchen via the oven.  In our house, we have a saying that vegan desserts are pretty much the same thing as salad.  Because they're both just made of plants... right?  So they're both good for you!  As we see it, this is a little salad-wrap appetizer for our main-dish salad.

Aww yeah... show me the inside!

After we were done with our appetizer-salad, we pulled our entree-salad out of the oven and tried our best not to eat all of it before the night was through.

Don't worry - there was at least a little salad left over for breakfast ;)