Fun Friday: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Brownies

Oh. My. Gosh. If you had told me this morning that it was possible to make whole wheat better-for-you brownies that were to die for, I would have thought you were smoking something. What makes a from-scratch brownie good is the melted butter and fudgy, fattening, yumminess, right?

Apparently, I was mistaken. It all started when I was trying to decide what I should make for our Fun Friday. Since I'm in the middle of a move, I'm trying to use up partially eaten stuff from my freezer. Enter one half-eaten bag of chocolate chips. And what did I want to do with them? I really wanted to make chocolate chip brownies. What to do, what to do...?

Although I have previously tried a Whole Wheat Brownie Mix, I wasn't thrilled with it. They tasted too much like low-fat brownies. And my tried and true homemade brownies use melted butter like most recipes do. I know from experience that if you add chocolate chips to warm batter they melt. (Shocking, but true!) So it was time for me to find a new recipe.

I went to Allrecipes and found a basic recipe to start from that used oil instead of melted butter (to see the original recipe, click here). Then I started tweaking it in true Candid Cook fashion, using up some sweet potato puree I had in my fridge in the process.

Here's the recipe I ended up with:

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Brownies

2 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. baking cocoa
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
4 eggs
2 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
2/3 c. canola or olive oil
1 c. sweet potato puree
1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Make a well in the center.

In order to keep from using a separate mixing bowl for your wet ingredients, add them in the following order: eggs. corn syrup, vanilla, and oil. Place them into the "well" as shown in the picture here with the eggs.

Mix together as much as you can. Batter will still be very thick.

Add sweet potato puree and mix until creamy.

Stir in chocolate chips and pour into 13x9 inch pan sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.