Thursday, September 06, 2007

Mmmm, brownies!

Vacation, yay! Visited with family last weekend to kick things off. We had watermelon, an afternoon at the lake, general hanging out, and..... brownies! We brought brownies to the cookout, and since I thought one pan wouldn't be enough, we made two.

So I got to experiment. One made according to the recipe on the box. (You didn't think I'd make them from scratch, did you?) One made substituting apple sauce for the oil. Interesting. The applesauce not only changes the texture (rubbery), but affects the taste (less chocolatey). Too bad. So we were trying to imagine what would fix this. I think, cooking less long than the directions suggest would be a good start. And, I would add some chocolate/cacao to compensate.

So I stopped at the store on the way home and picked up two more boxes of the same mix. I'm such a scientist at heart, really. Has nothing to do with chocolate. And I made a batch two days ago. Not very brownie-like, but a yummy dessert! I put in a full cup of applesauce (that's 1/3 cup more than the oil required), about two cups of cocoa mix (a high end version, with cane sugar, cinnamon and a bit of chile), and cooked it at the same temp, but for only 21 minutes in a 9x11 pan. The body of the brownie has a better texture, and the very top layer is sticky, almost fondant-like. Very chocolatey! We ate them with a thick Greek yogurt that tastes a bit like fromage blanc. A little sugar on top of the yogurt made it even better the second night. So, not a great solution for a healthy brownie! But, a pretty yummy variant.

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