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Flourless Brownies

Posted by Lindsey G.
I try to eat mostly grain free when it comes to desserts. We also do not use any refined sugars and really stick to mostly raw honey and maple syrup in our treats. I have tried a few different ‘grain-free’ brownie recipes and have been less than thrilled with the results. It turns out grain-free brownie recipes can be kind of tricky to get right. I find the coconut flour brownies to be hard to swallow (to dry!) and the almond flour ones don’t agree with me. This is why I haven’t posted a true brownie recipe yet on my blog.
I was so excited last week when I stumbled upon an amazing recipe for flourless brownies made with natural sweeteners in another fellow blogger, Ditch the Wheat’s cookbook, Indulge, which includes over 70 grain-free and paleo treat recipes. You heard that right…this is a completely flourless recipe – that means gluten-free, grain-free and almond and coconut flour free! The only ‘flour’ in these is the cocoa powder. These brownies are more than spot on. They are brilliant! These are going to be my go-to brownie recipe from now on!
Ingredients
4 large eggs
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup of coconut palm sugar*
¼ cup + 1 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). In a bowl, mix all the ingredients until velvety smooth (I used my Vitamix!). Pour into a parchment paper lined 8 x 4 loaf pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes. The brownies will be soft in the middle at 30 minutes and have a slight jiggle. Leave the brownies for at least 5 hours before cutting and eating (I personally couldn’t wait that long and I put them in the fridge after about 15 min of cooling down time and then ate them about an hour later!).
This recipe makes 8 brownies.
*I now use 3/4 cups maple syrup (Grade B) in place of the palm sugar for a moist and gooey texture. Cooked for 30-35 minutes the center will appear to be uncooked but after cooling for a few hours (or in the fridge) it will settle and be more firm. The texture will be more like a molten chocolate cake.
http://www.homemademommy.net/2013/01/flourless-brownies.html

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Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons and the Damascus Accident

“Thirty-three years ago to the day, the United States narrowly missed a nuclear holocaust on its soil. The so-called ‘Damascus Accident’ involved a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile mishap at a launch complex outside Damascus, Arkansas.

During a routine maintenance procedure, a young worker accidentally dropped a nine-pound tool in the silo, piercing the missile’s skin and causing a major leak of flammable rocket fuel. Sitting on top of that Titan 2 was the most powerful thermonuclear warhead ever deployed on an American missile. The weapon was about 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

For the next nine hours, a group of airmen put themselves at grave risk to save the missile and prevent a massive explosion that would’ve caused incalculable damage.

“The story is detailed in Eric Schlosser’s new book, “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety,” which explores how often the United States has come within a hair’s breadth of a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war. Drawing on thousands of pages of recently declassified government documents and interviews with scores of military personnel and nuclear scientists, Schlosser shows that America’s nuclear weapons pose a grave risk to humankind.”

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Warning! Only to be read with empty bladder!

Don’t mess with old people (especially little old ladies):
A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags was ripped and every once in a while a $20 fell out onto the sidewalk.
Noticing this, a policeman stopped her, and said, “Ma’am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag.”
“Oh really? Darn it!” said the little old lady. “I’d better go back and see if I can find them. Thanks for telling me officer.”
Well, now, not so fast,” said the cop. Where did you get all that money? You didn’t steal it, did you?”
“Oh, no, no, nothing like that”, said the old lady. “You see, my back yard is right next to the football stadium parking lot. On game days, a lot of fans come and pee through a knot hole in the fence, right into my flower garden.
It used to really tick me off. Kills the flowers, you know. Then I thought, ‘why not make the best of it?’ So, now, on game days, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers….
Every time some guy sticks his thingy through my fence, I surprise him, I grab hold of it and say, ‘O.K., buddy! Give me $20, or off it comes.’
“Well, that seems only fair,” said the cop, laughing. “OK. Good luck! Oh, by the way, what’s in the other bag?”
“Well, you know how it is in business”, said the little old lady, “not everybody pays.”

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16 year-old Invents Bio-plastic from Banana Peels

What comes to mind before you discard your banana peel? Certainly not the consideration of its use to reduce petroleum-based pollution and create bio-plastic, yet this is exactly what Elif Bilgin, 16, from Istanbul, Turkey, sought to achieve and successfully accomplished. Winner of the 2013 Science in Action award, Google’s third $50,000 annual competition, she addressed the need for environmentally friendly alternatives with practical resources and easy-to-attain banana peels.
http://www.trueactivist.com/16-year-old-invents-sustainable-bio-plastic-from-banana-peels/