Brownies with a Secret!

There are lots of flavours that we know go really well together and compliment each other,  strawberries and cream, rhubarb and custard, egg and bacon, cheese and tomato, salt and pepper are just a few. There are others that may not sound so appealing at first but do actually work, such as carrot cake, iced tea, cold soup. Who would have thought a vegetable would work so well in a cake. So how about chocolate and mayonnaise?! This may sound unusual at first but it really does work. I found this recipe a few years ago for chocolate brownies. It still has the moist, chocolatey and chewy texture you associate with a brownie but contains less saturated fat and sugar. The recipe was created by Angela Nilsen for The Good Food Magazine. She experimented with many different combinations, prunes, bananas, and cocoa instead of chocolate but while they all lowered the fat content they didn't add the richness you expect from a chocolate brownie. In the end she found that the secret was to use mayonnaise. This meant she could cut out the butter and halve the fat. I think you'll agree that the end result does taste really good and not at all 'low fat'. When cooking with chocolate do choose a good quality dark chocolate that has 70-80% cocoa solids. It is full of antioxidants and has more of an intense flavour, so you do not need so much of it. I like Green and Blacks Organic Chocolate and there are lots of different flavours you can experiment with. 

Chocolate Brownies.

Makes 9

Ingredients

85g Dark Chocolate 70% cocoa solids chopped into small pieces

85g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g castor sugar

50g light muscovado sugar

1/2 tsp coffee granules

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp buttermilk or natural yogurt

1 egg

100g mayonnaise (I use Hellmann's light)

Preheat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas mark 4

Lightly oil and line the base of a square 15cm (6inch) cake tin

Fill a small pan one third full with boiling water. Bring back to the boil then remove from the heat. Put the chopped chocolate into a bowl that fits snugly over the pan. Stir occasionally until melted. (Alternatively you can melt chocolate in microwave but only do it for 20 second bursts at a time to avoid overheating and splitting the chocolate)

Combine the flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda

Stir both the sugars into the melted chocolate with the coffee, vanilla and buttermilk or natural yogurt

Stir in a tbsp of warm water

Break and beat in the egg

Stir in the mayonnaise until smooth and glossy

Sift over the flour and cocoa mix, then lightly fold in with a spatula

Pour into the pan and spread out evenly

Bake for 25-30 mins until a skewer comes out with just a few moist crumbs stuck to it. Do not overcook otherwise the mix will dry out

Leave in the pan until cool, then turn out on a wire rack to cool furthur. Cut into  9 squares

 Serve these to your family this weekend, just don't tell them the secret!