Instant Pot Applesauce Brownies

I was craving brownies but I wanted to be able to eat more than a little tiny slice without breaking my calorie "bank". So I looked up applesauce brownies (you can substitute applesauce for butter) thinking that someone else's recipe would be better than slowly modifying a butter brownie recipe.

And it was. I found one at Something Swanky that was just was I was looking for. It was an oven recipe, but originally, that's all I had.

Well, it was sort of what I was looking for. I wanted it even lighter in calories, so I substituted an egg white for the second egg. It was delicious, but more like cake than brownies. I wanted brownies. (Although I'm keeping that in mind if I want to make chocolate cake!)

I had recently gotten a pressure cooker, the Instant Pot, which, since it cooks under pressure and using steam, would likely make my recipe with the egg white substitution more brownie-like (it would squish the cake texture back down).

It surely did. A bit too much, actually. Now it was so dense it was like dough (but it was definitely cooked).

Things in the recipe got changed. Added, subtracted, modified, until I was finally happy with the taste and texture of the final result. The recipe is below the pictures.

brownie batter in 6" pan

brownie pan covered in foil on trivet in pressure cooker

brownies turned out onto plate

A 60 calorie wedge of delicious brownie!

Instant Pot Applesauce Brownies

Ingredients:
Wet
1/2 C applesauce
1/4 C turbinado sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg whites
Dry
1/4 C stevia baking blend (1 for 1 swap for sugar)
1/2 C. white whole wheat flour (60 g)
1/4 C. oat flour (30 g)
1/4 C. chocolate cocoa powder (20 g)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
Mix (whisk) all wet ingredients together in a bowl large enough to hold all the batter. In a smaller bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together. Spray 6" round pan with cooking oil.

Whisk dry ingredients into wet until no dry bits are left. Pour into sprayed pan. Tightly cover pan with aluminum foil (the batter doesn't rise that much).

Put a cup of water into the Instant Pot's inner liner. Put the trivet into the liner. Put the pan on top of the trivet with the trivet handles up so you have something to pull the pan out with.

Set on Manual for 40 minutes. Do a natural pressure release (wait for the pressure to go down) before removing pan. Place a plate on top of the pan and then, holding both together (it will be hot so use heat gloves, etc), flip the two over. The brownie will slide right out onto the plate (if you have a non-stick pan).

Cut the brownie into 12 slices. (Cut it into quarters, cut each quarter into three.) You do all of this while it's still warm. Cover and place into fridge to cool.

Brownies are good reheated for 10-15 seconds in the microwave on high or simply room temperature.

Nutrition information per 1 slice:
Calories 60
Protein 2 g
Fat 0.6 g
Carbs 13 g

Instant Pot Apple Cake (for 6 inch wide 2" high pan)

The original recipe is from Adventures from a Nurse. I haven't really modified it that much.

It's just that it calls for a 7" springform pan and I don't have one; it calls for salted caramel icing and I didn't want that, and it calls for "creaming butter and sugar and eggs" together which requires a food processor and I don't have that, either.

So I reduced the recipe, but I couldn't just halve it, because I had a 6" (non-springform) pan. And when you 3/4 a recipe that calls for 2 eggs, you have to get creative.

I tried this multiple times with several renditions of ingredients and ingredient amounts before I came up with the perfect apple bread for me. However it does owe heavily to her recipe--I can't stress that enough. I didn't come up with this and I never could have, not on my own.

So: my version of this goes like so:

Two slices from the entire apple cake. 

Ingredients:
Wet Mix:
3 C. apples, peeled, cored, and cubed* (about 315 g)
5 T. unsalted butter**
1/4 C. turbinado raw sugar
2 egg whites (92 g)
1 T vanilla
2 tsp apple pie spice

Dry Mix:
1/2 C. stevia blend***
3/4 C. all purpose unbleached white flour (120 g)
1/2 C. oat flour (80g)****
1 1/2 tsp baking powder (low sodium if desired)
1/4 tsp salt (KCl if desired)

Ingredient notes:
*I didn't peel my apples. I know all the arguments against using the peel, but it comes down to, "I'm lazy" and, "the heat of cooking will denature most artificial chemicals." Also, honeycrisp apples or other hard, sweet apples will do well in this recipe. Don't use a soft eating apple like Gala, or if you do, reduce the cooking time because otherwise you might as well use applesauce. In addition, the smaller you cube the apples, the denser the bread gets. The larger you cube the apples, the more the bread falls apart. So, do as you like between the two extremes and see what appeals to you.

** If you use salted butter, don't add the salt. If you use unsalted butter, add the salt.

*** usually says somewhere prominent on the package "measures cup for cup like sugar" or "great for baking". If you don't want to use stevia, use all regular sugar and add it all to the wet mix. The only reason the stevia is down here in the dry mix is, due to the powdery characteristics of it, it just works better.

**** The weight is important. If you don't have a balance or scale, make the oat flour "rounded." It's lighter than regular flour and you won't get enough in if you use a precise 1/2 C. I like oat flour but you can use regular flour instead if you want. Oat flour is made by putting old-fashioned rolled oats into a food processor or mixer and pulsing till you get flour; or, in my case, you ask your mom to use her flour mill while you're not there (sound-sensitivities is why I don't own a food processor to begin with).

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a big mixing bowl. Cube the apples while you're waiting for it to melt. Add the turbinado raw sugar and the cubed apples and mix with a spoon or fork. Once you've mixed enough so that the butter has cooled down a bit, add the egg whites. (Otherwise you'll cook them.) Add the vanilla and the apple pie spice and mix. 

In a small bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. If you add them in the order of the ingredient list, the heavier flour will keep the light stevia blend from puffing up into the room/your face. (Add carefully, however--don't dump the flour onto the stevia from five feet up, say.)

Give the wet mix one last mix and add the dry into it. The batter will be extremely dense and stiff. I use a dough whisk for mine; a regular whisk will not help you. A wooden long-handled spoon would probably work. 

Spray the inside of your 6" pan. It needs to be about 2 inches deep. (You can find pans like these at craft stores usually. The link leads to an Amazon Smile page which appears to have the exact pans I got from Michaels'.) Cut a 6" parchment paper circle to fit the bottom of the pan. Put it on top of the sprayed oil and then spray the circle, too. Then put the dough in; squish it down. The dough will fill it to the top.

Cover the pan with something metal. I use aluminum foil but I know many people will not want to. It needs to be metal so that it not only keeps the condensation from the top of the pressure cooker from dropping into the cake, but it also will conduct heat against the dough and cook this part more nicely. In a pinch, you don't have to cover it at all. 

Put 1 C of water into a 6 quart Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. (I think an 8 qt uses 1.5 C as minimum liquid.) Put the trivet on the bottom with the handles up. Put the (covered) pan onto the trivet so the handles of the trivet are still accessible. (Or otherwise rig the pan so you can get it out afterwards.)

Set for manual high pressure for 70 minutes. Do natural pressure release. (The original recipe says quick release. I never did it that way, having overlooked that part. I like natural release better anyway because it doesn't make as much noise.)

Put a plate, bigger than the cake pan, on top of the uncovered cake pan. Flip them both. The cake will slide out of the cooking pan and sit nicely on your plate, ready to be eaten or have icing applied if you so desire. (I think it's good without icing.)

Cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge if you don't eat it all. Warm up a piece to eat it, preferably, although it can be eaten cold.

There you have it. One apple cake.

medium sized cubes were used, according to my personal idea of "tiny, small, medium, and huge" apple cubes

Made exactly as described above (weights and including sodium substitutions; no icing), the nutrition information is:

1 serving = 1/8 of the cake

Calories: 177

Fat 7.4 g

Carbs 24.6 g

Protein 3.7 g

Sodium 25.8 mg

Potassium 138.8 mg

Fridge Oatmeal

This comes in many names and with many forms; refrigerator oatmeal, overnight oatmeal, muesli, and more. There's so many variations that it's not even a recipe, to my mind; it's just a way of making a snack involving oats!

I first found the idea at The Yummy Life, but as always, I messed with it to make "my" version. I still use the 1 C mason jars, though (they are labeled 1/2 pint but I don't think of them that way). You can buy these anywhere; amazon, walmart, so on and so forth. The lids are a bit more challenging, but quite a few things you may have around will use the same type of lids, only they're the one-piece-yet-still-seal that you will want should you plan to take this with you in your bag, like me.

So, the general idea is, instead of using heat to break down the oats and make them edible, you use time. The oats aren't going to have the same consistency as heat-made oatmeal, and for me, that's all to the good as I don't really like heat-made oatmeal (too gooey and smooth-but-not-quite-enough). Fridge oatmeal leaves the oats more intact so it's chewier and more like a wet oat snack bar than gooey porridge. (It won't hold its shape like a snack bar, of course, but I hope you get what I mean).

It's an extremely versatile recipe. You can make it just about however you want.

The basics: a container barely big enough to hold all your ingredients. Oats. Liquid. Spices/sweeteners/etc. Flavorings--like fruit, for example. Mix all the food together, put it in the container, allow to sit for as long as you want (the longer it sits, the squishier the oats get--I like mine 8-12 hours long), then eat.

Here is my current favorite: Chocolate Strawberry Fridge Oatmeal.
Prep time: 5 minutes, Wait time: 4-16 hours.

Ingredients & Equipment

Ingredient List:

• 1/2 C. Rolled Oats (old-fashioned; NOT quick)
• 1 T. whey protein isolate powder, vanilla flavored (Isopure is the current brand in use and the nutrition facts reflect that ... I'm planning to switch to another brand, however.)
• 1 tsp. chia seeds
• 2 oz. strawberries, cut up
• 3/4 tsp. Turbinado sugar (aka raw sugar)
• 1/2 tsp. Unsweetened cocoa
• water

Equipment List:

• 1/2 pint mason jar with lid
• bowl
• mixing utensil (aka large spoon)
• kitchen scale

Notes: 

• You don't have to use the protein powder. I just do so I get a little more protein into my life. If you don't, and you want the vanilla flavor, use 1 tsp vanilla extract instead.
• You don't have to use the chia seeds. If you use flax seeds instead, you have to make sure they are ground. We can digest whole chia seeds but not flax seeds. You don't have to use either, but if you don't, be aware that they absorb a lot of liquid so you may have to adjust your liquid levels to match.
• 1 tsp of cocoa powder was too much chocolate for me; if you don't like the 1/2 tsp and want more chocolate, you can certainly add more!
• water: if you want you can use milk (but the nutrition facts will no longer be accurate).
• You only need a kitchen scale if you want to measure the strawberries exactly. If you don't, there's no harm done--but your nutrition facts won't match mine.
• It is entirely possible to mix everything in the mason jar; I've done it. I find it's easier to mix in the bowl, but it's possible (using judicious shaking) to mix it in the jar.
• The order of ingredients isn't important, but since the protein powder is a drink mix, the instant it touches the wet fruit it will start trying to dissolve; since it doesn't have enough liquid it gets sticky, and then it sticks to everything it can find, including the bowl. I find cleanup is easier if I sandwich the powder between the oatmeal and the fruit.

 Directions:

Put the rolled oats into the bowl. Sprinkle the chia seeds over it. Dump the whey protein isolate powder on it. Weigh out 2 oz cut-up strawberries on top of the powder. Put the sugar and the cocoa powder on top of the strawberries. Mix everything using the spoon. Then using the spoon, ladle the mixed ingredients into the mason jar.

At this point you can refrigerate for as long as the strawberries would have been good for in the fridge anyway. (If you want it as an afternoon snack, you can make it the night before up to this point, then add the liquid in the morning. If you want to make several jars at once and use them throughout the week, you can do that too. If you want to have it for breakfast, make it the night before and proceed immediately to the next step so it soaks overnight.)

Add water in a thin stream until the jar is almost overflowing. You want to at least see water on top of the ingredients; how much more you add is up to your personal tastes (how squishy you want your oatmeal). Put the lid on and refrigerate for 4-16 hours. (It can probably go longer than 16 hours, but that's as long as I've ever done it for.)

That's it. Nice and simple!

1/2 C. rolled oats as the base

Oats, chia seeds (the little black things), and whey protein isolate powder.

Adding 2 oz of strawberries

All ingredients before mixing

After mixing (the cocoa and whey protein have coated the strawberries)

Dry ingredients in jar before adding water.

Nutrition facts (calculated using myfitnesspal app)

So far I've done Chocolate Strawberry, (as above), Chocolate Blueberry (it's worth the time to cut the blueberries apart!), Peach Cinnamon (use cinnamon instead of cocoa powder in my base recipe), Mixed Chocolate Berry (blueberries and blackberries), Vanilla Strawberry (no cocoa powder), Vanilla Blackberry (blackberries, no cocoa powder). 

I may try Pumpkin Pie (100% pumpkin with pumpkin pie type spices), Chocolate Peanut Butter (use more cocoa powder, no fruit, add peanut butter powder (yes, it exists!), increase oat amount to fill jar), Apple Pie (cut up soft apples and use cinnamon and nutmeg or apple pie spice) as time goes on.

Everything I've made so far has come out fairly close in terms of nutrition: they're all around 220 calories. They make a really good afternoon snack. You can double the recipe (and use a pint jar, obviously!) if you want a heftier calorie count for a breakfast meal.

The possibilities are nearly endless. Let me know what you try!

Introduction

The CAT and I have been cooking (well, they mostly observe) and I thought perhaps you'd like to try some of my recipes.

Here's the thing though; I'm not very inventive. I don't come up with original recipes. What I do is find a recipe (or several) on the web, or from a cookbook, and then I mess with it to make it work for me. Due to a number of food allergies, intolerances, and dislikes, most recipes need messing with to make it something I want to eat.

I'm also autistic, with sensitive taste buds, and you may find that some of my recipes are too bland for you. Hey, mess with them! That's what I did!

All my blog posts will come with a google docs download for the recipe that will give you as short and simple directions as I could manage (I have a brevity deficit, some will laughingly tell you).

So, what do I aim for when I'm messing with a recipe? Several things, which I will list, but none of them is "the most important." I'm just listing them in the order I think of them.

• Lactose-free (I'm lactose intolerant. I will use things like whey protein isolate that come from milk but no longer have lactose in them, so my recipes aren't necessarily "dairy-free" for those of you with actual milk allergies.)
• Lower in calories. No, I'm not trying to lose weight (or gain it). But if I can lower the calories, I can eat more of it, and then I'm hungry less. I like being hungry less.
• Lower glycemic index. This goes along with the previous comment. The faster the sugar in a food hits your insulin system, the faster you get hungry again. I don't like being hungry. But no, sorry, I doubt most of these recipes would be suitable for an actual diabetic. It does mean that I like whole wheat flour and oat flour and oats and raw sugar (vs white sugar), etc.
• Low sodium. I don't have heart disease. Yet. It gallops in my family history, though, and I'm sure it'll catch up with me. So it doesn't hurt to reduce the sodium I'm eating. I don't mind the salt substitute KCl so I use that in baking a lot. If you do mind it, or you don't care about sodium, feel free to simply use table salt wherever I say KCl (or potassium chloride, same thing).
• Tastes good. I don't like the way artificial sweeteners taste; stevia and monk fruit and sucralose (splenda) all have a bitter flavor. So you won't find artificial sweeteners lowering the calories here; everything's natural and ordinary.
• Avoiding my food allergies So ... no vinegar (or very, very little, and no apple cider vinegar at all); no chicken (yes, I'm allergic to it, astonishingly enough), no soft cheeses like ricotta or feta, no onions (unless they've been cooked to mush), um, you know, I can't actually keep track of them anymore. I just know them if I look at ingredients and go, nope, can't do that one, let's see what I can substitute.
• Avoiding my food dislikes There are things I'm not allergic to that I simply don't like. Most vegetables fall into this category, unfortunately. So does most fish.
• Making things simple to cook Yeah, I know, all that came before doesn't sound like it! But I get tired easily, and I don't particularly want a recipe that requires a lot of baby sitting, slaving over a hot stove, making all kinds of bits and pieces that then go together, etc. I like one-pot recipes (or one-mixing-bowl); I will grudgingly use two if I have to. I like things that are quick to put together. 
• Low noise level Remember the bit about me being autistic? I don't like a lot of noise, and I have to put up with a lot at work, so at home, there's hardly any automatic kitchen equipment. Of course, the first recipe I'm posting violates that by using a coffee grinder (I don't drink coffee ...) but I don't even own a food processor and for the most part, everything can be done by hand. Except that first recipe.

As you can see, all my requirements almost demand that I mess with other people's recipes. I'll give them a link-back credit if I still know where it comes from, but don't be surprised if mine is drastically different once I got done with it!

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Here's the google docs link, in case you want to skip all my ramblings and just get the recipe. Which if you decide to make it, you'll want that link to be able to print it, too.

I'm not good at photographing food, but I discovered you have to have a picture for Pinterest to work, so here's a picture of one of the muffins I just made.

This was originally a Lemon Raspberry Muffin recipe. I discovered, after buying a box of fresh red raspberries, that I don't much like them. They're too sour. My solution to dilemmas like this one is to find something to bake it into. I went hunting, and found this recipe. 

I made it, more or less as directed, and discovered I still don't really like raspberries. My mother was the one who sparked further interest in the muffins, as she commented that the raspberries didn't really suit them but blueberries might.

And I'd been intermittently hunting a good blueberry muffin recipe that wasn't 200 calories a muffin. 

Thus I started messing with this recipe. What I came up with gives a nice, moist, tender, chewy muffin with a golden brown color and tastes good both straight from the oven, re-warmed in the microwave, or even room temperature (although I like the two warm versions best).

I went through several iterations with this one, and I'm dreadfully sorry but I came up with a recipe that has three different types of flour and three different types of leavening agent! But I will say the cream of tartar does make the final "yum" of the muffins.

Here's the recipe, with comments from yours truly. You'll find a list of needed equipment at the bottom. All links go to Amazon Smile; I don't get money, your charity does. 

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Prep time: 15 minutes (maybe--I didn't time it); Wait time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 18 minutes; Makes 18 muffins

Ingredients

1 small lemon

⅓ C. turbinado sugar (larger kernels, also called raw sugar. Walmart sells it, so it's not like it's hard to find)

1 C cashew milk, unsweetened (if you use almond milk it won't curdle. This milk gets turned into a non-dairy "buttermilk" and the point is the curdling part.)

⅓ C. applesauce, unsweetened

1 large egg white (you can buy this in a box that looks like a milk carton, only smaller. I hate separating eggs and wasting yolks, so I get the 100% egg white carton and use that. It has the equivalent on the side, but I believe it's 3 tablespoons)

1 tsp vanilla extract (try to get the real stuff, not the imitation version)

1 C white whole-wheat flour (I suppose you can use straight-up whole wheat but I've never done it. White whole wheat is a different type of wheat and it's more suitable for baked goods, like muffins. It's also screamingly expensive and only comes in "organic" from King Arthur (which is good, because I like that brand) but because you can't buy it non-organic you're stuck with the price inflation)

½ C all purpose flour (I get King Arthur all-purpose)

½ C oat flour (60 g) (Get rolled oats, not quick, and use a flour mill or a food processor to grind them up. Keep the leftover oat flour in the fridge--it has more oils in it and will go rancid if left at room temperature for weeks. The weight is because 1/2 C of oat flour does not equal 1/2 C of all-purpose and you actually need more oat flour if you go strictly by the 1/2 C measure.)

1 tsp baking powder (low sodium*) (You don't have to get low-sodium. But it'll change the nutrition information)

1 tsp baking soda (Make sure all the lumps are squashed out. Biting into a lump of baking soda in your finished muffin is not fun. Baking soda tastes quite bitter. Trust me on this one.)

1 tsp cream of tartar (This is the third leavening agent. It's what makes a snickerdoodle cookie a snickerdoodle and not a sugar cookie.)

¼ tsp potassium chloride (salt substitute)* (Again, you can use NaCl (table salt) but it'll change the nutrition information.)

1.5 C fresh blueberries (about 214 g before you wash them)

Directions

Remove the zest from the lemon with the vegetable peeler. Cut into smaller pieces and put aside till later.

Squeeze the juice from the lemon into the 1 C. cashew milk. Wait for 15-20 minutes for it to curdle.

Set the oven to 400℉ to preheat.

Grind the lemon zest and the sugar together in the coffee grinder. This will make the sugar sticky. Put the sticky sugar in a small mixing bowl. (If using a food processor you can keep adding ingredients to the same bowl.) (And by the way, I don't have a food processor, so I don't know how well this will work, either, but the original recipe has you doing it this way.)

Add the curdled cashew milk, the applesauce, the egg white, and the vanilla extract. Mix. (A spoon will work). (Do try not to get too enthusiastic though, or you'll have it all over the counter. Gentle mixing. It's a very liquid combination.)

In the large mixing bowl mix the three flours, the three leavening agents, and the potassium chloride. Mix well. (A spoon will work but not the one that’s wet.) Rinse the blueberries. Add them to the flour mixture and toss gently until covered in the flour mixture. (This helps reduce the blueberries' tendency to sink to the bottom of the muffin batter in the pan. Most all muffin recipes will have you add the blueberries at the end. Try it this way some time and see what you think, even if you don't actually make this recipe.)

Give the wet ingredients one last mix and add them to the large mixing bowl. Mix everything together just until the dry is all wet. (And if there's a tiny bit still dry, don't worry about it. You don't want to over-mix it. This is going to be a very liquid looking muffin batter, by the way. It's supposed to be.)

Prepare the muffin pan(s). (Liners, spray oil, whatever you’ve chosen). Fill each muffin hole about ⅔ to ¾ full using a large spoon or a large melon baller. (The links all go to smile.amazon.com. I don't get money from it. Your chosen charity will.)

Bake at 400℉ for 18 minutes. Check with toothpick to see if done at the end of the baking time (it should come out clean, like a cake).

Allow muffins to cool in the pan at least 5 minutes before removing them.

Equipment

18 “holes” worth of muffin pan(s) (I have to go with a 12 muffin hole pan and a 6. Maybe there's an 18 holes in one pan version out there, but I don't have it.)

Vegetable peeler or cheese grater (I can't use a cheese grater without blood, tears, and recriminations, so I'm the vegetable peeler person. You'll want to cut the lemon zest into smaller pieces than the peeler gives you, just to make the coffee grinder's life easier and take less (noisy) time.)

Lemon juice squeezer (I got mine at walmart, an impulse purchase while I was shopping for other things that I haven't regretted. It does take a lot of arm strength and the liquid runs down both the outside and through the drain holes. Also, I don't think anything but a small lemon or lime would work well ... but hey, I'm not squeezing the lemons by hand anymore, and that's a bonus. But you can do it by hand if you don't want to buy anything extra.)

Coffee grinder or food processor (This coffee grinder is great. We use it at work to grind up the product into a fine powder so I can test it (I'm a chemist). It goes inthe dishwasher repeated just fine. I highly recommend it, as I've seen first hand the beating it can take.)

Small mixing bowl

Large mixing bowl

1 C. liquid measure container (or 2 C if you’re not weighing the blueberries)

⅓ C. dry measure container

½ C. dry measure container

1 C. dry measure container

1 teaspoon measure

Spray oil, butter, coconut oil, or liners: something to keep the muffins from sticking to the pan

Large spoon or large melon baller (see link above)

Spatula (probably a half-size one so you can use it to get the wet sugar out of the coffee grinder cup as well as clean the bowl during muffin depositing time)

Nutrition Information (using myfitnesspal app; 1 serving equals 1 muffin)

Calories 74 (probably 75, if you've sprayed the pan or gotten a little generous with the flour)
Fat 0.6 g
Sodium 96.3 mg
Potassium 106.8 mg
Carbs 15.4 g
  Fiber 1.6 g
  Sugars 5.3 g
Protein 2.3 g