My brownies are bland.

I'm new to cooking and have barely ever baked anything, but today I made brownies based on this recipe: http://ift.tt/2mkuSfn I have a huge tub of chocolate flavored protein powder and was mostly curious whether I could use it instead of cocoa powder so I searched for brownie recipes that use protein powder. That is the one I settled on but it still calls for cocoa powder so I just went with it anyway to see what would happen. I doubled the portions because it calls for an 8x8 baking dish and I only have a 9x13. Here it is with my adjustments.

• 1/2 Cup + 4 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 1/2 Cup Chocolate Casein Protein Powder 1 Cup chocolate whey protein powder
• 1/4 Cup Oat flour (gluten free if needed) 1 packet of Quaker bananas and cream instant oatmeal (half cup)
• 1/2 tsp Baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 2 Eggs
• 4 Tbsp Honey, melted
• 1 Cup Non-fat Vanilla Greek yogurt
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp Peppermint extract
• 1/2 Cup Unsweetened Vanilla almond mil 1 Cup whole milk
• 4 Tbsp Coconut oil, melted
• 1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp Mini chocolate chips, divided (to sprinkle on the top and leave chocolate chunks)

Shockingly they did come out okay. The instructions said to bake for 13-17 minutes, I live at sea level and had to go to 20 minutes before the fork would come out cleanly. The only issue I have is that they are pretty bland. They taste about how I imagine boxed dry brownie mix would taste.

Can anyone tell me why they taste that way, how my substitutions may have affected the result, and what I can do to make these worth eating now? I don't have any ice cream, that would have been an okay way to salvage the batch. The last time I attempted baking I just poured vegetable oil and eggs into boxed mix and it came out delicious. These aren't even tempting me.

Submitted March 08, 2017 at 06:30PM by Jah_Ith_Ber http://ift.tt/2mHGwUi