This is a bit of a different recipe to normal. It's sweet not savoury. These brownies are not perfectly healthy but they are better for you than my other brownies, although that might be in part because they are so rich that you only need a tiny piece to satisfy you! I received some flavoured icing sugars and cocoa powder from Sugar and Crumbs, a family run company that provides 'convenience without compromise' with 24 naturally flavoured icing sugars and 5 cocoa powders. They sent me coconut icing sugar, cherry Bakewell flavour and cherry cocoa powder in return for a review and recipes. Well, I leapt at the chance to try out their products as I've been coveting them ever since I tried the icings at last year's Cake and Bake Show. This recipe uses their cherry cocoa powder but would work with any of their cocoa powders (chilli, coconut, lime and orange).
I always make brownies by melting chocolate and butter in a bain marie so I was very dubious about using cocoa powder instead but the theory of it reducing the amount of fat and sugar in the bake - as lovely as chocolate is, it's not exactly light in those two ingredients! However, the sugar has to be kept fairly high in order to make the brownies soft and cracked on top. I have looked at so many healthy brownie recipes which involved kidney beans, beetroot or some other odd ingredient that I didn't want in my baked treats so I started looking at recipes involving greek yogurt and sour cream. I thought they sounded great but as the sleet came down this morning I changed my mind and used yogurt instead! The only thing is, my fridge just had raspberry and passionfruit yogurt in it! I suggest you use plain or vanilla flavoured low-fat yogurt instead. Also, why do people put oil in brownies?
