Fudge Brownies
- Butter-flavor no-stick cooking spray
- 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut up
- 1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, chopped
- 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour
- 1/2 cup unsifted unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Generous pinch of ground nutmeg
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1 large egg plus 2 large egg whites
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons water
- Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Lightly coat a baking pan with cooking spray.
- In a small saucepan, combine the butter and chopped chocolate and set over very low heat until melted.
- Stir the mixture and set aside to cool.
- In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
- Measure the sugar into the large bowl of an electric mixer and beat in the cooled butter-chocolate mixture.
- Add the egg plus whites, vanilla, and water and beat well.
- Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed just until blended.
- Don't overbeat.
- The batter will be thick.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top, and bake for 22 to 25 minutes; 23 minutes is usually right for me.
- When done, the top will look dry and a wooden pick inserted near the edge will come out with a few crumbs but the center will look slightly gooey.
- Cool in the pan and cut into squares.
- I have been trying for a couple of years to produce a brownie worthy of the name with less fat and less solid chocolate.
- My taste testers finally agree that this is it - a great brownie they would never suspect of being lower in anything.
- I have cut the classic 58 percent down to 31 percent calories from fat and eliminated 87 calories, 10 g fat, and 22 mg cholesterol from each brownie.
- When traditional proportions are disrupted, textures become moist and cakey at best or dry, insipid, and tough at worst.
- One rule emerges clearly: The fewer ingredients, the better the brownie.
- Avoid the usual low-fat stand-ins: applesauce, yogurt, corn syrup, canola oil.
- Use butter, but less, and replace most of the solid chocolate with rich-tasting Dutch-processed cocoa; retain at least 1 ounce of solid chocolate, however, for a more complex chocolate taste.
- A few tricks: Cake flour produced a more tender crumb than all-purpose, and melting the butter with the chocolate, as opposed to creaming the solid butter with the sugar, gave a fudgier crumb.
- A touch of baking powder seems to enhance the crunch of the top crust.
- Faced with the choice of adding high-fat chopped nuts or keeping the 1/4 cup butter, there was no contest; nuts put us over the top in fat content.
- However, if you feel deprived without them, sprinkle about 3 tablespoons of finely chopped walnuts on top before baking; the changes are modest: 33 percent calories from fat, plus 9 calories and 1 g fat per brownie.
butter, unsalted butter, chocolate, cake flour, dutch, baking powder, salt, ground cinnamon, generous, sugar, egg, vanilla, water
Taken from www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/fudge-brownies-recipe.html (may not work)