Slightly-healthier Brownies

Anyone who knows me knows I love cake/brownies/chocolate. But I feel so guilty--all that sugar and white flour :(

So I found this recipe, which uses some whole wheat flour, less sugar than normal, and no butter. Sounded promising, and I decided to modify it a little bit. Instead of a mixture of traditional American whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour, I used atta, an Indian flour that we use for flatbreads. My mom says that atta is kind of like the white whole wheat flour you'd find in an American store. I also added some brown sugar because the original recipe claims to yield a dark-chocolate level of sweetness, but I'm a milk chocolate kind of girl. Additionally, I wasn't in the mood for non-uniform brownies, so I omitted the nuts and chocolate chips. Finally, instead of plain water, I incorporated coffee to accent the chocolate flavor.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup atta (white whole wheat) flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp light brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetend cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup skim milk
1/4 cup hot coffee
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl combine the wet ingredients. Now mix everything together, be careful that you don’t over mix.

Pour the brownie batter into a greased and floured 8×8 nonstick pan. Bake for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I ended up sifting the dry ingredients because my flour and sugar were a little lumpy, which, combined with the relatively large amount of baking powder, gave the brownies more of a cake-like texture than a typical brownie texture. Which is totally fine by me, but I think next time I'll decrease the baking powder a little bit. Also, I used cheap generic cocoa powder, so it wasn't as chocolatey as I would have liked. Next time I think I'll make it a point to add in extra chocolate chips or use much stronger coffee. Or maybe I'll try buying fancier cocoa powder.

Overall though, I was impressed that the texture of the brownies wasn't really affected by the whole wheat flour. The brownies were a little rougher than you'd usually expect, but overall still soft and tasty. Mmm!