Healthier Brownies and Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

A few weeks ago on Pinterest, I saw someone who had made their own, healthier ice cream sandwiches, which I thought was a great idea!  I decided to make my own, mixing a few recipes I've seen over the last few months.  Here are two takes on the "better for you than a normal ice cream sandwich" - both use the same filling, just with different outsides.

The first (and Travis' favorite)  is a brownie ice cream sandwich.  Here's the twist - the brownie is made with black beans.  Yes...black beans!  Working for Diet.com, I read a lot (a LOT) of healthy living blogs.  One of my favorite bloggers is Snack-Girl.  A few years ago she posted a "recipe" for healthier brownies that substituted black beans for the eggs and oil, but never tried it because I hate black beans.  But, with my self-delegated task of making healthier ice cream sandwiches, I decided to give it a shot and the results couldn't have surprised me more.  They were GREAT!  I mean really great - and even better when you think about the hundreds of calories you're saving!

All you need is a box of brownie mix (Ghirardelli Double Chocolate is my favorite) and a (15.5 oz) can of black beans.

Blend the unstrained black beans in a food processor or blender.  (I love my tiny food processor!)

Mix the brownie mix and black beans in a bowl, then pour into a greased pan.  Now...if you're just making the brownies, bake according to the directions on the back of the box.  If you're making the ice cream sandwiches, split the mix between two 8x8 greased pans and bake at 325 for 23-25 minutes.  You want thin brownies!

Cut each pan into 6 pieces (once down the middle, then into 3's).  Then fillet each one so you have even thinner brownies (so you can put filling between the two parts).  If you're having a hard time cutting the pieces in half, try putting the brownies in the freezer for a while first.

To make the "ice cream" mixture, you'll need one large tub of Cool Whip, a large box of Jello instant pudding (5.1 ounce), and 1.5 cups of milk (I used skim).

 Whisk the jello and milk (you're using half the milk the package calls for so it's a thicker filling).

 Fold in the whipped cream.

Now fill your brownies!  You can either spoon the filling in or be super fancy and pipe it onto the brownies.  If you don't have the proper tools, don't worry!  Fill a gallon-sized Ziploc bag with some of the filling and cut one tip off.

 Once filled, put the sandwiches back in the freezer overnight so they harden up.  SO good!

If you're looking for an even faster (and lower calorie) ice cream sandwich, swap the brownies with cinnamon sugar graham crackers!  I broke each cracker in half, so each "sandwich" is under 100 calories.  

What are some other filling/outside combinations you'd like to try?  These are a lot of fun...and much cheaper than Skinny Cow bars!

Mini Pumpkin Pies

One of the girls at work, Arielle, loves making “tiny” food, and inspired me to try some mini pumpkin pies.  I LOVE pumpkin pie, but usually only eat it on Thanksgiving because Travis isn’t a fan (who isn’t a fan of pumpkin pie??), and I can’t possibly eat an entire one myself before it goes bad.  These mini pies seemed like the perfect solution – I can get my fix and easily share the rest with neighbors and friends.  Did I mention they are super cute, too?

I compiled several recipes to come up with the below…and it was delicious!

Mini Pumpkin Pies (makes 3 dozen)

Filling:

2 (15 ounce) cans pumpkin

2 cans Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk

4 eggs

¾ cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon salt

Crust:

2 boxes of refrigerated pie crusts (4 crusts total)

Mix together pumpkin, condensed milk, eggs, sugar, spices and salt. 

Unroll each pie crust.  I took my rolling pin and made the crusts a little thinner.  Using a 4” round cookie cutter, cut out crust circles.

Spray a muffin tin with Pam and put one crust into each hole.  You can tap a few small holes in the bottom of each with a fork to make sure the crust doesn’t bubble as they cook.

Fill each crust (almost) to the top with the filling mixture.  Using an ice cream scoop works really well!

I rolled out the extra crust and used Fall cookie cutters to make cute little toppers for each. 

Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350 and cook for another 20 minutes.  Let’em cool before you eat, and top with cool whip or vanilla ice cream!

Travis will be taking 2 dozen of these to Brandeis tomorrow, my neighbors will get several…and we’ll have some.  Turns out that after this, Travis does like pumpkin pie!

Everyone loves it when I bake...including Toby!