The brownie universe isn’t exactly full of surprises. The combination of sugar, butter, flour, chocolate, eggs, a few extraneous ingredients, plus a little oven time, inevitably leads to some form of brownie action. Of course, the resulting degree of deliciousness is all in the details — just talk to the adamant nut-adders, the chocolate chip enthusiasts, or the “fudgy” versus “cakey” people that can seemingly never agree. Yet, by and large, the language of brownies is pretty much the same: delicious chocolate squares that just about everyone loves. Including me.

But I have a secret. With the exception of chocolate (which can be profoundly beneficial in its unprocessed form), I don’t use any of the “conventional” ingredients in my homemade brownies. In fact, I don’t even bake them. (I know — what a rebel.) Instead, by using exclusively natural, whole foods, the inherently gorgeous flavor of each healthy ingredient does all the sweet singing — without needing the crutch of sugar or butter. Undercover health benefits like antioxidants, good omega fats, potassium, magnesium (and more) nutritionally rank this dessert as more of an energy bar than an “extra 20 minutes on the treadmill indulgence.” Best of all, five ingredients plus five minutes is all it takes to go from zero to brownie.

Oh, and as for their decadent texture? Simply put: go team “fudgy.” Here’s the printable recipe.

Making good, healthy desserts doesn’t have to steal away an afternoon of baking (or 12 hours waiting on a dehydrator). One of my favorite desserts – beautiful, fresh fruit energy tarts – take just 10 minutes start-to-finish. Thanks to using simple healthy substitutions and time-saving tricks, these tarts emanate big flavor, well-rounded nutrition, and are healthy enough to be consumed at any time of the day. We healthy dessert people are pretty sneaky, no?

Here are my secrets to making a fast and healthy fresh fruit energy tart:

1. Leave the oven off: With just a few exceptions, the less whole foods are cooked, the more vitamins, enzymes and phytonutrients they contain. Additionally, tarts are usually served at room temperature anyway, so rather than heat a recipe up just to cool it down again, simply keep it at room temperature and make it perfect to begin with.
2. Make a base of energy: Instead of using a nutritional black hole (aka a conventional pie crust), use whole food energy bars as the base of the tart. Just pick your favorite bar and treat it as a firm dough, pressing it into a tart mold to take the desired shape. Shazaam – crust finished. I especially like Vega’s Vibrancy Bars as well as Larabars because they taste delicious, are made entirely from nutritionally dense foods, and have a perfect moistness that makes them ideal for pressing into a crust form. Using energy bars not only packs in a ton of nutrition, it’s also like the world’s greatest time saver. (NOTE – not every type of bar in the world works for this application – use bars with a softer texture like the ones I’ve mentioned).
3. Use the inherent sweetness of fruit: Nature has a sweet tooth too – it’s called fruit. Dressed up with a just little bit of spice, and combined with other fruits or a smidgen of natural sweetener like yacon syrup, fruit fleshes out these desserts dramatically. Using fresh fruit bulks up the size, lowers the caloric impact, boosts nutrition, and adds that sweet goodness without all the sugar or fat. Great fruits for tartlets include apples, pears, peaches, mangoes, bananas and figs.

Of course, these guidelines are really only flirting with your creativity in making the super tart combo of your wildest dreams. Not dreaming yet? Here’s my basic tried and true recipe for Apple-Pear Energy Tartlets.

Apple Pear Energy Tartlets

As mentioned in my blog post, feel free to substitute like crazy in this quick recipe. Another great energy bar to use instead of the Vibrancy bars are Larabars (Apple Pie flavor), though you may have to use one additional bar for the recipe as they are smaller. The Vibrancy bars are my favorite from a nutritional standpoint, plus the gentle crunch from the sprouted buckwheat they contain is absolutely ideal for the base of a tart.

And of course, simply doubling the recipe and making one large tart works all day long.

INGREDIENTS:
1 medium sweet crunchy apples (aka Fuji or Gala)
1 medium soft pear (aka Barlett or bosc)
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice, or cinnamon
1 Tbsp yacon syrup (optional)
3 Vega Whole Food Vibrancy Bars, Original Flavor

DIRECTIONS:

Make the filling: chop the apples and the pear into a fine mince. Toss with pumpkin pie spice and yacon syrup until well combined. Set aside.

Assemble: Using a standard-sized muffin tin or tartlet molds,  tuck a layer of saran wrap into a cup to use as a mold. Break off half of an energy bar.  Press the bar firmly into the cup, coaxing the bar “dough” evenly along the bottom and up the sides about 1/2 inch with your fingers to form a tartlet base. Use the saran-wrap to remove the packed base from the muffin tin, then peel away plastic. Use the plastic again to form the remainder of the tartles. Liberally spoon in the apple-pear filling evenly inside of the each of the tartlet crusts and serve.

Makes 6 three inch tartlets

Healthy benefits: protein, antioxidants, high fiber, dairy-free, gluten-free

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