On a recent cool, rainy day, I had a hankering for brownies. Had I been out and about on my lunch hour, I may have picked up a good (portion-controlled) brownie at a local bakery. But since I was home, and what went in the brownies was up to me, I did what I typically do, and considered how to boost the nutrition of the pan of brownies, while still making them satisfyingly-moist and chocolaty-sweet. Whenever cooking or preparing food, my mantra is to improvise with ingredients on hand, and to suit taste and nutrition.
Here's a Fudge Brownie recipe from a well-known baking ingredient company that I used as the basis for my Cocoa Chocolate Chip Brownies. Note the changes I made in (bold text) to the ingredients and measures where I made substitutions, with an explanation for each described below.
Fudge Brownies
4 large Eggs
1 ¼ cups Dutch-process Cocoa (Unsweetened Natural Cocoa)
1 tsp Salt (Cut amount in half)
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Espresso Powder (Optional)
1 Tbs. Pure Vanilla Extract
1 cup unsalted Butter (2 sticks) (3/4 cup Canola, Soy, OR Mild Olive Oil)
2 ¼ 1 cups Sugar (Cut amount to 1 cup)
1 ½ cups All-Purpose Flour (1 cup White Whole Wheat (Pastry) Flour or 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour + ½ cup White Flour)
2 cups Chocolate Chips (1 cup only 60-70% minimum cacao chocolate chunks or chips (can be broken up from a dark chocolate bar.)
(1 cup unsweetened Red Tart Cherries (aka sour or Montmorency))
1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Lightly grease a 9”x13” baking pan.
2. Crack eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat at medium speed with cocoa, salt, baking powder, (espresso powder) and vanilla for about 4 minutes.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together oil and sugar until blended, then add to the cocoa mixture, beating at medium speed for almost a minute.
4. Add the flour, chocolate chips, and cherries stirring with a spoon/spatula until smooth.
5. Spoon batter into baking pan and bake for 20 minutes before checking for doneness. Every oven operates differently; the brownies may need another 5-10 minutes of baking.
Recipe Notes: KC’s Cocoa Chocolate Chip Brownies
· Natural or raw cocoa is slightly acidic. Back in the 19th century, a Dutch chocolate maker added alkaline to temper the acidity for a smoother tasting product. Dutch-processed cocoa became somewhat of a standard and remains most of what’s available on the market today. Unfortunately, adding alkaline to cocoa destroys the rich antioxidant compounds (similar to some found in vegetables and fruits) that can benefit heart health. Check the ingredient list on cocoa—if it refers to “Dutch-processed” or “contains alkaline,” you won’t be getting any of the flavanol antioxidants with nutritional merit. Natural or Raw cocoa is packed with antioxidant-rich compounds that provides the health benefits in dark chocolate. Scharffen Berger, Rapunzel, and Hersey’s NATURAL cocoa are brands that don’t contain alkaline. (Note: Ironically, Hersey’s Special Dark cocoa IS Dutch-processed, containing alkaline and thus have no beneficial flavanols.) I like this recipe as it uses 1 ¼ cups of cocoa (more than the flour amount) whereas many other brownie recipes use a mere 1/3-1/2 cup of cocoa.
· Salt is a common ingredient for most baked goods as it helps to balance flavor and texture. As a general rule of thumb, I typically cut salt in half in most recipes. (For the record, baking powder and baking soda also contain sodium.)
· Espresso does add a lovely rich flavor to cocoa/chocolate recipes, but it’s not a staple in most kitchens. Use it if you have it, but you can still create a delicious brownie here without it.
· Butter v. Oil: Butter has a unique flavor that can’t necessarily be replicated. That said, oil can replace the function of butter as a fat in many recipes, resulting in a very favorable product. As an animal fat, butter is very high in artery-clogging saturated fat. If I was going to enjoy that one bakery brownie I bought made with butter, no big deal. But if I’m going to have a whole pan of brownies on the counter for (hopefully) a couple of days, I’d like them to offer a healthier fat for my family and self. Typically, I replace 1 cup of butter with ¾ cup of oil, because oil is a pure fat, whereas butter contains milk proteins. Most any liquid vegetable oil is fine though I tend to use organic canola as it’s virtually flavorless, leaving the chocolatey-sweet taste to dominate.
· Sugar is an inexpensive, overly-abundant ingredient that we eat wayyyyy too much of in Western society. Another rule of thumb for me in baking is to cut the sugar AT LEAST by half. You’ll still enjoy plenty of sweetness and your body will be a lot better off for it.
· All-purpose flour is virtually just starch, no bran or germ, no real nutritional value, just carbohydrate energy that’s readily stored after digested. Traditional Whole Wheat flour is made with a hard red wheat that tends to bake up somewhat heavy and dense. White Whole Wheat flour is made from a lighter species of wheat that bakes up lighter in weight, yet it remains a whole grain as the bran and germ have not been removed. (This can be understandably confusing to consumers when White four refers to flour refined of the bran and germ, while White Whole Wheat flour is unrefined, but grown from a white seed variety, as opposed to a red seed variety.) Enriched flour may sound healthy, but the bran and germ nutritional powerhouses have been removed along with a few vitamins and minerals. Then, only a few of the vitamins and minerals have been then fortified back into to the refined flour for it to be considered enriched.
Whole grain flours contain so much more nutrition than either All-Purpose or Enriched flours. Their bran and germ are high in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that all help to reduce risk for heart disease, certain cancers, digestive diseases and more. Fiber helps to slow digestion, moderate blood sugar values, and improve weight management. White Whole Wheat Pastry flour has a bit less protein and thus bakes up a bit lighter for desserts than regular White Whole Wheat flour, though the latter will also have good results. If you have both regular whole wheat flour and refined white flour, you can add half and half (or ½ cup each as mentioned above.) Also note: I use less total flour as natural cocoa tends to be drier and takes up more moisture in the recipe.
· Cacao is the raw bean from which chocolate is made. Cocoa is the powder that remains when the fat (cocoa butter) has been extracted from the raw bean. On a bar or bag of chocolate, a % cacao or % cocoa are used interchangeably to identify how much of the product is made from pure cacao beans by weight. The higher percentage means more cacao and less sugar. For example, a 78% bar of chocolate (that includes the cocoa butter) contains 22% sugar. A 40% bar of chocolate contains 60% sugar, but this also has less cocoa butter which is replaced with saturated milk fat.
· Tart cherries are those delicious fresh cherries that have been pitted and dried. They contain many nutrients with significant health benefits: decrease muscle soreness and increase strength in athletes; reduce inflammation; enhance brain health; and strengthening the immune system. That said, I do want to clarify that not one food nor nutrient is a panacea, rather tart cherries (and other ingredients) help to boost the nutrition of our diet, including these brownies. Chocolate and cherries are a good flavor marriage. Unsweetened cranberries are also a good match.
So go ahead, improvise with your baking to boost both your nutrition and health.
Try this edited recipe and I think you’ll agree: Mission Accomplished—
Taste AND Nutrition?
You Bet!
Oh, top with low fat yogurt or ice cream, or enjoy with a glass of milk of your choice.
Yum!
KC
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