Can o' beans

A friend, who shall remain nameless, frequently suggests ways of tweaking recipes to make them better for you. I loved it when she shared an idea for making chocolate muffins using devils food cake mix and a can of pumpkin. They were delicious and my kids ate them up.

At the same time she had mentioned a way to tweak brownies that I decided I'd take a wait and see approach on. Well, she told me that she made them this week and they turned out good and her husband ate them as well. Since Derek is out of town and we can have chocolate in the house this week, I decided to give it a go. First of all, I probably made a mistake in the brownie mix I purchased. She told me to get the Betty Crocker low-fat brownie mix and I went for the Krusteaz fat-free mix since it was on sale. I should have known better since I absolutely despise the taste of artificial sweetener. So no matter what I did to these brownies I probably wasn't meant to enjoy them.

So I opened up the special ingredient, rinsed and drained them, put them back in the can and added water to fill the can. Yes, you guessed it, black beans. Then I pureed them in the food processor. Katie stirred them into the brownie mix and kept saying, "But Mom, it smells like beans!" I reassured her that it would be good and she wouldn't notice. 35 minutes later and voila! It still smells like beans...and tastes like chocolate covered beans and splenda. Gross.

So I just wasted a can of beans. And brownie mix that I probably could have made with the can of pumpkin sitting in my pantry. Although I still wouldn't have liked it since the overwhelming splenda taste ruined the mix in the first place.

Sorry friend, but I'm going to have to let you enjoy this one all on your own.

**update** Katie decided to try just a teensy tiny bite...I don't even think it went into her mouth before she just started shaking her head and saying no. But then she told me when I started to throw the entire thing in the trashcan that I was being "wasteful".