When I was in undergrad, I had to take many classes of which I had both feelings of love and hatred for. One of them? Experimental Food Science. This class was kitchen fun and tedious torture all wrapped up into one. Back then, I was neither tedious nor detailed with anything. Hence, the hatred part....no one likes any situation that forces them out of their comfort zone, right? The purpose of this particular class was to experiment with different ingredients in recipes and observe the effects that they had on the overall outcome of the finished product. It involved lots of weighing ingredients on scales, calibrating ovens, measuring heights at which products had risen, and taste-testing. We observed the consistency of microwaveable puddings vs. cooked puddings, measured the height of a muffin cooked in the microwave (yes, you can do that) vs. one baked in the oven, and so on and so forth. Despite asking my class partner to knock me out of my misery with her kitchen spatula, I actually walked away from this course having learned some very interesting things about cooking. (Thanks, Dr. Cunningham!) One of them was how to successfully replace fat in a recipe. Examples of this? Pinto bean fudge, cookies made with mashed banana instead of butter, muffins made with flax seed mill instead of oil and last, but not least.....brownies made with spinach. The favorite out of all these? Definitely the fudge. If you don`t believe me, then try it. I don`t have the recipe we used in undergrad, but if you google “Pinto Bean Fudge”, you will find some quality recipes.
My kitchen lab partner and I spent hours and hours experimenting with the spinach-brownie recipe. The final products turned out so-so. The best combination we found was replacing only half the fat in a standard brownie recipe with pureed spinach. Replacing all of it was just gross and the batter resembled something you would see in a baby`s diaper. Vom.
Rather than share with you my hidden spinach brownie recipe that I cannot find and do not really wish to (we had to taste test so many that I never want to have one again!), I thought I would broaden your horizons with complimenting another blogger`s fat replacement recipe: http://www.hungry-girl.com/
Click on the link and search for “Yum Yum Brownie Muffins”
This simple recipe uses pureed pumpkin and had my good friend Delina not brought it to my attention, I never would have known it existed. HG`s recipe produces a moist brownie with some hidden nutrition. They are lower in fat (but not fat-free) and fewer calories for the size that they are. Nutritional information is provided by Hungry Girl at the end of the recipe. Props to her...she is quite impressive!
WARNING: DO NOT taste the batter....
*Note: Pureed canned squash can also be used.
*Note #2: My favorite healthy fat replacement is milled flax seed. Try Hodgson`s Mill brand and refer to the side of the box for directions. It can be used to replace butter or oil in most any recipe and can also be used as an egg replacement!
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