I have officially perfected Swank-friendly brownies! In fact, I have gone back and deleted my previous brownie post, because there is just no point in keeping it up anymore. These brownies are rich and decadent, and not "diet" tasting at all. The previous brownies were delicious, but they didn't have that level of richness that all brownies need. Since they were missing a little something, I decided to test the recipe again and this time added dark chocolate cocoa powder, a little white sugar, skim milk, and vanilla extract. That paired with cooking the brownies at a perfect temperature turned out to be an ah-mazing brownie.
These brownies are in no way fat free, but being that they don't have butter, real chocolate, or any other ingredients high in saturated fat, they are quite impressive. Definitely try them! Yum!
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 cup raw sugar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 egg whites
- 3 tbsp applesauce
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup natural/organic crunchy peanut butter
- 8 tbsp Hershey's Dark Chocolate Cocoa Powder
- 1/4 cup skim milk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- Nonstick cooking spray
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, raw sugar, brown sugar and white sugar together in a large mixing bowl. The raw sugar may not fit through your sifter, so just pour the remains in the bowl with the other ingredients. Stir well with a wooden spoon.
In the bowl of a standing mixer, mix together the eggs and egg whites. Gradually at the vegetable oil to the eggs. Add the applesauce and mix some more. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet. Scrape the bowl to ensure all the ingredients are evenly incorporated.
Add the peanut butter to the mixture and mix again. After that, add the cocoa powder, skim milk, and vanilla extract. Mix, mix, mix.
Pour the brownie batter into 9x9 inch cooking pan greased with nonstick cooking spray. Cook 35-40 minutes or until a tester comes out almost clean (make sure not to overcook them!).
Tip: Spray the measuring cup with nonstick spray in order to coax the peanut butter to slide right out.
Let the brownies cool completely before cutting.