Chocolate Almond Avocado Brownies

These are from yet another book.  This one is only checked out of the library.  It is called the 10 Things you need to eat.  It has been a pretty good read.  In addition to the 10 things there are other tips and ideas, and other good for you foods listed throughout the book.  The 10 things they list are Tomatoes, Avocados, Beets, spinach, quinoa, lentils, cabbage, super fish, nuts, and berries.  Each of the 10 things then has recipes using them.  I have a couple things listed to try this week.  The first I got to were the Chocolate Almond Avocado brownies.  They are in the avocado section - the other thing I want to try with avocados are smoothies, but I had already made my green smoothie for the day, and I think I actually made these brownies and quinoa burritos with avocado pico de gallo, so I figured we had had enough avocado for the day.

These brownies turned out good.  I wish I would have chopped my almonds a bit smaller, but other than that, they were good.  These were quite a dark chocolate flavored brownie.  I like my brownies a bit fudgier.  These are a bit dark for my preference on brownies, but good none the less.  All of my pictures of this are bad - I totally need to get my flash fixed because I can't take pictures of dark things after the sun has gone down.  Bummer.  Here's a small pic of the brownies - poor quality and all.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup almonds
• 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate
• 1/2 cup canola oil (I used smart balance healthy blend)
• 1 large ripe Hass avocado, pitted and peeled.  (I used 1.5 medium small avocados)
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup dark brown sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.  Spray a 9 X 13 glass baking dish with cooking spray (Original had you line with parchment.  I was lazy and didn't and had no problems with anything sticking.)
2. Whisk together the flour, cocoa, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
3. Grind almonds in a food processor until roughly chopped.  Stir nuts into the cocoa mixture.
4. Break chocolate into pieces and chop in the food processor until coarsely chopped.  Stir into cocoa mixture.
5. Mix oil, avocado, eggs and sugars in the food processor until smooth.  Use a rubber spatula to transfer the wet mixture into the cocoa mixture.  Fold together and pour into prepared dish.
6. Bake for 35 minutes until batter has just barely set in the middle.  (I think I left mine 41-42 minutes.)