Chia Brownie Recipe

No idea how this would turn out, substituting chia flour for regular flour-- and wow.  Just wow.  It tastes pretty much like a regular brownie.  What is wicked about it is that everything in the brownie is now healthy, except the, ahem, three cups of sugar!

I've taken an existing recipe from allrecipes.com for Brooke's Bombshell Brownies, my favourite brownie recipe, and just substituted chia flour and coconut oil but otherwise left the recipe the same.

Chia seeds are getting easy to find nowadays.  I had to order my chia off Upaya Naturals site, but now you can buy them at Costco!  I've written previously about where to buy chia in Canada.  I've only used half my 5 lb bag, and now that I've discovered how great chia is for baking, you'll see it disappear pretty quickly.

From an article in the National Post, now quoted since the original texts seem to always disappear when I need them:

Like all seeds, seeds from the salvia hispanica plant are calorie-dense, packing 137 calories per ounce (28 grams), which means that small portions can go a long way. Also like other seeds, chia seeds provide both protein (4 grams per serving) and fibre (a

whopping 11 grams, or about 40% of an average Canadian’s daily needs, per serving). They are a good source of calcium, providing 18% of an adult’s daily needs.

Perhaps most impressive about chia seeds, however, are the nearly 5 grams of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids per serving, which is more than double the amount in a serving of salmon. Having said that, the omega-3s in chia exist as alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a plant form of omega-3 fat that is not readily converted to the metabolically active form of omega-3s, known as EPA and DHA, by the human body (it’s estimated that 0-9% of ALA is actually converted all the way to DHA, the form of omega-3 that is incorporated into cell membranes). Even so, the amount of ALA in chia is substantial enough that if even a fraction is successfully converted to DHA, it can still be a valuable source of essential omega-3 fatty acids, especially for those who do not consume fish.

Since buying my 5 pound bag of chia, I have had problems incorporating it into my food.  I tried chia pudding, and found it, I don't know... gross!  However, grinding it finely into chia flour using my hand coffee grinder seems to be my solution.  You can replace regular flour in baking recipes with chia flour.   It did not seem to alter the taste much of my favourite brownie recipe.  It did cook much faster, and seems drier.  The finished brownie has a coconut scent but tastes fudgy.

Here it is:

Chia Brownies
(Modified from Brooke's Bombshell Brownies on allrecipes.com)

Wet Ingredients:

3 c sugar
1 c coconut oil (Costco!)
1 T vanilla
4 eggs

Dry Ingredients:

1 1/4 c chia seed flour
1/4 c white or whole wheat flour
1 t salt
1 c cocoa powder

Optional:
1 c chocolate chips

Mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, then throw them together.  Mix in chocolate chips.  Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes in 9x13 pan lined with parchment paper for ease of removal.

YUM!

May 4, 2013: Note to self--  Do NOT substitute any of the sugar with stevia leaf powder.  Supposedly one teaspoon is equivalent to one cup of sugar.  While it wasn't horrible, you could really taste the stevia in the final brownie, although my kids still ate it without complaint.  It had an aftertaste like Splenda.