I’ve been reading a lot about healthy, cheaper and environmentally friendly eating. If you want to focus exclusively on any one of these items, to take it to an extreme, you really have to forgo the others. However, I have been trying to find a reasonable balance between all three that I can live with for me and my family.
Delicious box like, dairy-free brownies from scratch
Because of the baby I have cut out all dairy & soy proteins. For health and environmental reasons we’re trying to cut high fructose corn syrup out of our diet. For health reasons I’m trying to cut down on random preservatives and refined/white flour, sugar & rice. All of this suggests more home cooking and less packaged foods – which is also good for the environment, because factories that process all that food use a lot of energy and water and result in a lot of waste.
Here’s my dilemma. I LOVE box-mix brownies. I’m KNOWN for my brownies, which until now, have all been based on box mixes. I put out the word on Facebook that I needed a good recipe and my friends pointed me to Smitten Kitchen. If you love to cook or if you love to read about food, her blog is addictive. Her brownie recipe is also good, and it has beautiful pictures to go with it, as do all her recipes.
I decided to go healthier and dairy free and a larger batch. I’m not sure she’ll be able to recognize her base recipe, but I want to acknowledge it. I took my brownies to a party and got multiple requests for the recipe, so I knew I had a hit. Moist, chewy, delicious!
I changed butter to Crisco for the dairy issue. I suspect that a butter substitute would work as well. I cut down the amount of sugar, added bananas, substituted whole wheat flour for 2/3 of the four and added chocolate chips. These brownies rock!
[yumprint-recipe id=’1′]Do you have a healthier, more environmentally friendly recipe to share with us? Leave the URL in the comments!
Happy Eating and Happy Greening!
Alicia
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