As a responsible food business with sustainability as one of its core principles, Edinburgh Food Social is always trying to reduce food waste by finding creative uses for different ingredients. In the past, we’ve used a glut of lemons to make green olive and lemon tapenade, but recently, we were faced with a much bigger challenge.
A great deal of our food comes from FareShare, a charitable food redistributor that helps ensure that excess food products are used instead of ending up in landfill. The nature of this service means that we often receive a large number of certain foods. Recently, we got numerous cans of cannellini beans that were approaching their use-by dates. Usually, we would use these to make a savoury recipe, perhaps a bean hummus. However, we thought a fun challenge would be to find a way of using these white beans to make some form of baked treat. After a bit of research, we decided to make bean blondies.
During the research phase, we found a recipe that had been published in The Guardian. The intention was to follow this recipe, and then adapt it until we were happy with the end product.
Photo by Jacob McGowin on Unsplash
The First Attempt
As this was the first attempt, we decided to follow The Guardian’s recipe word for word by mixing all the ingredients – including maple syrup, chocolate, peanut butter and rising agents – in a blender before baking.
This recipe relies on the use of aquafaba. If you’ve ever opened a can of beans you’ll have seen this ingredient; it is the liquid the beans are cooked and packaged in. As it creates a stable foam when whipped, aquafaba is often used as a vegan substitute for egg whites. However, we found that the finished blondies had a claggy texture and a very beany taste. So, after having a think, we decided to try again.
The Second Attempt
At Edinburgh Food Social, we focus on cooking (and teaching people to cook) delicious, wholesome food. For this reason, we didn’t just want to improve the blondies’ flavour by chucking in a load of sugar. However, this choice raised the question: How else could we improve the flavour?
We decided to experiment, replacing the aquafaba with oat milk and increasing the amount of peanut butter. We also added more baking powder to help prevent the blondies from becoming claggy. The resulting blondies tasted much better, but still contained an off-putting bean flavour that didn’t go very well with the other flavours. For that reason, we decided to try again.
The Third Attempt
Photo by Andrew Valdivia on Unsplash
The idea here was to take a step away from The Guardian recipe and rely on some additional ingredients. We added malted barley oats, melted butter and honey to create a different flavour profile and improve the texture. We also topped the blondies with white chocolate and candied lemon peel to provide a nice sweetness and sharp citrus flavour.
While this blondie tasted great, it didn’t hold its shape once it came out of the oven. Instead of being quite light, the blondie collapsed and became very dense. Despite this disappointment, we felt we were getting closer – on to the next attempt!
The Fourth Attempt
To fix the structural issues, we replaced the malted barley oats with regular oats (as these are drier and lighter) and then upped the amount of raising agent in the hope that this would provide some additional hold. We also baked the blondie for a little longer.
Fresh out of the oven, these blondies were fantastic. They had a great taste and held their shape. Unfortunately, once we re-tasted the blondies the next day, it was clear that, after sitting in the fridge, they’d become quite stodgy.
The Fifth Attempt
It had bean a long journey to get to this stage, but this was the final round of the bean blondie experiment. The goal here was to solve the denseness of the blondies once and for all. We decided to mix the topping with the batter, thinking that the additional sugar and liquid from the candied lemon peel was what was causing the blondies to sink and become dense. Happily, we were right! The overall texture of the blondies was much improved and they still had their wonderful, sweet and citrusy taste. The experiment was finally over (much to the relief of our taste-testers who were completely blondied out).
By sharing this story, we hope to show that, with a little bit of work, you can find new, creative ways to use up ingredients and prevent food waste. Remember, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
If you would like to help Edinburgh Food Social continue to educate people about the ways they can reduce food waste, please consider donating to our organisation. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Bluesky to keep up to date with our programs, classes and news.
