I enjoy trying to make healthier versions of desserts, and I usually do so by looking up a normal dessert recipe and then substituting some ingredients for others I find healthier.
And, honestly, most of the time, the dishes turn out kind of good with something a little bit off. Like the ice cream I sweetened with allulose– it had good flavor but made our throats burn after a few bites. Like the donuts I made with coconut flour that crumbled into sand. Or, recently, not refrigerating the cookie dough before baking (like the recipe said to do) and having all the cookies melt into one solid mass.
My husband (my designated taste tester) likes to ask, “What did you change?” the moment I ask if he likes a new dessert I’ve made. He knows I can’t (won’t) ever follow a recipe to the T.
I am prone to being a little too flippant when following recipes and a little too lazy to look up one that suits my exact wants and needs. Aaaannddd… this time is no different. But I can explain!
I wanted to make beef liver brownies. It actually seemed like a good combo because chocolate can cover up some strong flavors. Surprisingly, I could not find any recipes online that had beef liver as a key ingredient in brownies (though I did find a lot of dog treat recipes). This surprised me because there are lots of blogs and health gurus out there, and I thought there must be someone who had done this before.
Well, I’m sure there are many people who have done it before, but I just couldn’t find them on the vast interwebs.
So, all I did was find a brownie recipe that had low/no sugar (I used allulose and maple syrup as my sweeteners), and then I added one teaspoon of dried beef liver powder to the dry ingredients.
To my pleasant surprise, these brownies turned out quite delicious and didn’t taste at all like beef liver! As the ultimate test, I had my husband try the brownies without telling him the “secret ingredient.” He liked them! And so I asked, “Can you guess what I put in as a secret ingredient?” He guessed all the normal things– eggs, butter, cocoa powder, gluten-free flour, and vanilla extract. But never did beef liver cross his mind. Score one point for me! First point ever!
So you ask, why did I want to use beef liver in the first place? Well, beef liver is arguably THE most nutrient-dense food on the planet. This means that for every calorie, there are more nutrients (such as vitamin A, choline, copper, zinc, vitamin B12, selenium, etc.) than other foods.
Have you ever heard the term “empty calories?”
We may as well call the calories that come from beef liver,
“my-cup-runneth-over-with-abundance calories.”
Each square of these brownies provides 200 mg of beef liver powder. This probably only equates to eating a tiny nibble of fresh liver, but if you eat half the pan (not a hard thing to do in a day or two– hey, it’s a bread loaf pan, it’s pretty small!), you get 1,000 mg of beef liver powder. For reference, 3,000 mg of beef liver powder is equivalent to 1 ounce of fresh liver.
As many who have tried liver know, it does not take much of it to boost your energy levels and give you a new vitality you never knew you could have! And if you already know you hate the taste of beef liver (like me), these brownies might be a fun and enjoyable way to get more liver into your diet.
Sure, you can take beef liver capsules, but why not, on occasion, take your supplements in brownie form?