Black Bean Brownies with Vanilla Nice Cream (Vegan, Whole Foods)

If you’ve been cooking whole foods plant-based for a while, then you’ve probably had black bean brownies. You’ve also probably had “nice cream”. But what if we combined them to form the ultimate whole-foods plant based a la mode that you can eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner? 

The combination of the two creates the perfect balance of flavors and textures. We actually ended up eating a whole tray of brownies in one day without noticing!

And the best part is that I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty.

Without further ado, here’s our recipe for vegan nice cream and black bean brownies. 

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Recipe

Black Bean Brownies

The black bean brownie recipe was finalized after trying many of the other recipes out there. The main source of our inspiration was this recipe from Dr. Joel Fuhrman. We reached our final recipe when we accidentally added a bunch of extra black beans.

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Black bean brownie before going on top of the nice cream.

You’ll notice that we call for an entire two cans of beans or 3 1/2 cups!

This is no accident. It makes the brownies come out super thick and fudgey in the end. It also packs a bunch more phytochemicals and antioxidants. We think you’ll thank us later!

Ingredients

• 2 cans of unsalted black beans or 3 1/2 cups fully cooked from dry
• 10 pitted Medjool dates or 12 soaked and pitted Deglet Noor dates (if you don’t have Medjools)
• 2 tbps almond butter
• 1/2 cup coca powder
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 2 tbsp cacao nibs (optional)

Directions

All you need to do is add everything (besides the nibs) to a food process or large blender and press go! You want to make sure all of the ingredients are well mixed at the end, especially the chia seeds. They should be completely pulverized and not visually noticeable in the final product.

It may help to grind the chia seeds first, but we didn’t find it necessary with our food processor.

You want to add the optional nibs after and mix manually or do a quick pulse. This ensures that they they are still chunky and not completely ground up.

Baked at 200F for 1.5 hours or 250F for 1 hour. Going to be dependent on your oven as well. We have convection so ours cooks pretty fast.

Nice Cream

Once your brownies are done, the next step is to make the nice cream.

Making nice cream is rather simple if you have a powerful smoothie blender. The better your blender, the less liquid you’ll have to use. The less liquid you use, the more your nice cream will be more like soft serve and less like a smoothie.

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It should look like soft serve after being blended.

Even with an extremely powerful blender, we do recommend that you put just a splash of your favorite plant-based milk. It will give your nice cream an extra layer of flavor and creaminess that you wouldn’t get with just bananas. 

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 or 2 frozen bananas
• A splash of soy milk (or other nut milk)
• 1 tsp of pure vanilla extract (add more if you’d like)
• 2 tbsp cacoa nibs (optional)
• 2 tbsp of coconut flakes (optional)
• Sliced strawberries (topping)
• Blueberries (topping)

Directions

You simply want to add all of the non-topping ingredients to your blender and press blend. If you have a blender with a tamper, such as a Vitamix, push the ingredients directly into the blades until you develop a vortex. Don’t over-blend. The final product should look like the above picture.

If you have a lower powered blender or one without a tamper you may need to add a bit more soy milk to get things moving. You can always add 2-3 ice cubes to make the finished product a bit more thick.

Be careful adding too many cubes, though. You don’t want to dilute the flavor.

Final Steps

Now that you’ve got everything made it’s time to assemble. Put the ice cream into a bowl and then place a heaping slice of black bean brownie on top. 

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Black bean brownies with banana coconut nice cream.

Finally, top with sliced strawberries, blueberries, and coconut flakes. Feel free to add any other topics you may want, even an additional scoop of almond butter for extra richness.

Enjoy!​

If you are looking to add extra protein to your vegan dessert recipes, try tofu. But don’t forget to drain out the excess moisture! If you’re curious to learn more, check out our best tofu press guide.

Joey Bruno

Hey, I’m Joey. I’ve been cooking since I was a little kid and love everything about it. You can find my writing about food, kitchen appliances (such as blenders) and much more. Thanks for stopping by!