Spring it and Win It (Giveaway Post)

Posted January 27th 2010 at 9:56 pm by Mara @ What's For Dinner?

There are just good things happening like crazy over here at the What’s For Dinner “headquarters”! First, we had the iHerb.com $50 shopping spree contest (which you can still enter), and then the announcement of the opening of my OpenSky shop, and today even MORE cool stuff!

I’ll get to the cool stuff after I show you my quite boring dinner. It tasted fantastic, but really, it wasn’t anything exciting. At all.

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That would be steamed brown rice, steamed broccoli, and pan “fried” cube steak. The cool part: I steamed the broccoli in the steaming basket of my rice cooker while the rice cooked! Very convenient! The cube steak was floured, egged, then bread-crumbed, and cooked in a couple teaspoons of olive oil. Delicious? Yes. Pretty? Not really…

Now comes the good part. While I was waiting for the State of the Union to come on, it became increasingly obvious that there was NOTHING on TV. Some of you would’ve taken the opportunity to get an extra workout in. Some of you would’ve found SOMETHING to watch. Some of you may have done what I ended up doing: cleaning the kitchen and then baking brownies.

If you know me at all, you’ll know that me cleaning ANYTHING is a huge feat. I’m a very very very messy person. I was always that kid in school who had the locker that exploded whenever it was opened. My roommates in my favorite college house (kindly known as “the Blue House” because well, it was blue) had to get me a separate Rubbermaid tub for my dirty dishes because if it wasn’t there, they couldn’t get to the sink! Adam and I are slowly working on getting our house looking like grown ups live here, and just the fact that I cleaned is miraculous.

You’re probably wondering now “WHERE ARE THE BROWNIES?!” Ok, ok, here we go. After the brownies I posted on Sunday, I have been bound and determined to make a relatively healthy yet still fudgy brownie. I believe I have succeeded. This started as a vegan recipe in my head, and realized that not only did I not have any non-butter fat besides olive oil, nor did I have enough applesauce to completely sub it out, I used the butter. So they’re vegetarian, but can easily be made vegan with a couple small substitutions (and not the ones you’re thinking!)

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Fun Flax Brownies


Ingredients

1 stick of butter, softened
2/3 c. sugar
4 oz. unsweetened natural applesauce
1/4 c. whole flaxseeds (I used Tropical Traditions Golden Flaxseed)
1 1/2 c. water
1 c. whole wheat flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
3/4 c. cocoa powder (I used Now Foods organic)
1/4 c. milk (I used skim, but was out of Almond milk)
1/2 c. white chocolate chips (optional)

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350*. Add softened butter and sugar to mixing bowl and cream until light yellow and no longer grainy. While that mixes, place flaxseeds in your blender. Grind thoroughly. Add the water, and blend for 2 minutes until the mixture is foamy and is of egg-white consistency. (This is a vegan egg replacement for 2 large eggs. Feel free to use real eggs) Allow to sit a few minutes while the butter and sugar finish creaming. Add the applesauce to the butter/sugar mixture and mix well. Add flax “eggs” and mix well. Slowly add in the cocoa, and mix well. Add flour, mix until incorporated then add the milk. Gently mix in the chocolate chips and spread into a pan. I used my brownie pan, but an 8×8 would’ve been perfect. Bake about 25-30 minutes.
Remember that fudgy brownie texture I was looking for? Oh yeah, these have it… the flax and whole wheat flour along with the applesauce makes these a higher-fiber and healthier recipe than your typical egg/white flour/lotsa fat recipe, and honestly, the flax makes a great little crunch in there!

Do you notice that cool little button up under the recipe title? That button will soon become your new best friend! See, that button is from SpringPad, a very useful website which, once you have an account, can save recipes for you with just a click of a button! A few of my recipes (the most recent ones) have already been entered and will soon have buttons too. SpringPad is FREE, and the best way I’ve found to catalog all those recipes I come across that I want to try, but don’t want to print out. Or those ones that I go “OOH! I want to try that” and then forget where I saw it. Now, I can add a Web Clip button to my browser toolbar, and click it when I see a recipe I like. A window pops up, I hit save, and then all the recipes are in one place.

Now for the giveaway part (I know you love these!) MONTHS ago, I got a bag of Tropical Traditions golden flaxseeds sent to me to try. I hadn’t been able to think of anything to make with them until now, so now’s your chance: You can win one 16 oz. bag of whole organic golden flaxseeds from Tropical Traditions!

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Again, I’m going to go with the multiple entries thing! You MUST choose ONE of the options to be entered. Each additional method will earn you one additional entry. You must comment for each method. 4 methods = 4 comments = 4 entries. Get it?

Method 1: Leave a comment on this post about what you’d do with the flaxseed
Method 2: Tweet about the giveaway “I want to win flaxseed from @imadedinner and @troptraditions http://bit.ly/a9jk7f”
Method 3: Join SpringPad and Spring! my brownie recipe. I’m notified when you “Spring” but a comment is needed anyway :)
Method 4: Subscribe to the Tropical Traditions newsletter

Happy Springing and good luck! Winner will be announced Friday evening, January 29.


*Disclaimer: Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose. Nor was I under any obligation to review or sponsor a giveaway in return for the free product.

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