Recipe: Not-So-Sinful Brownies

On March 19, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom of California released an Executive Order ordering all individuals living in the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical infrastructure sectors, as outlined at https://www.cisa.gov/identifying-critical-infrastructure-during-covid-19. 

Since then, our family has never gone out to eat at restaurants, not even ordering to go. I am comfortable with cooking meals from scratch but baking has never been my expertise. I make a few muffins. It's the easiest thing to make, I think. 

My youngest daughter's birthday was coming up and in our paranoia, we didn't want to order cake. So, I didn't have a choice but to try to bake the cake myself. I thought maybe I should experiment on making brownies first before I level-up to baking cakes. The cake didn't turn out the way I like it but the brownies did. 

I searched online for brownie recipes. With my first try, I followed everything to the letter. It was way too sweet for me. I've been trying to lose weight too but at the same time, I love desserts. It's hard but I have to indulge from time to time. With my second try, I experimented on the ingredients to make the brownies a little less 'evil' 😏  It was a success! You know how I knew? My sweet expert husband approved of it and my 3 kids loved it! Kids are always the best critics when it comes to dessert. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup white sugar (the original recipe asked for 1 cup)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder. I used Hershey's.
• 1/2 cup oatmeal flour (the original recipe used all purpose flour)
• to make oatmeal flour: Place the oats into the bowl of your food processor. Pulse the oats until they are ground into a powder-like consistency. I used Quaker's® Old Fashioned Oats.
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

✪ Step 1

Pre-heat oven to 370⁰F (175⁰C). Grease and flour an 8-inch square pan.

✪ Step 2
In a large saucepan, metl 1/2 cup butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa,1/2 cup oat flour and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared 8-inch square pan.
Optional: sprinkle dark chocolate morsels on top.

✪ Step 3

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook.

In line with making this not so sinful, I chose not to make the frosting.