healthier date & chocolate brownies

Is there anyone out there who agrees with me that dried pitted dates look like dead cockroaches? Have a look at the pic below, doesn't it look like a pile of dead cockroaches to you? Well it does to me. The boy just looked at me strangely when I voiced it out aloud and shook his head. What type of person, whilst in the middle of slicing up ingredients says aloud that they're cutting up vermin? I guess there aren't too many people out there who do!

Slicing up the dead cockroaches or rather, the 140g of pitted dates. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees and lightly grease and line a brownie tin.

Melt 140g unsalted butter in a small saucepan, add the chopped dates, take off the heat and leave to stand for 10 minutes.

Sift 60g cocoa powder, 90g plain flour, and 1 tsp baking powder together into a large mixing bowl. Add to the mix 95g brown sugar and stir to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk 3 medium eggs and 1 tsp vanilla extract together, then stir in the dates and and butter. Add the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for roughly 20 minutes. By the way, this recipe is from Bill Granger's 'Feed me now!'

After 20 minutes...

Turn out and cool on a wire rack, then cut into squares.

As per the title of this post, this is a healthier brownie and being healthy is generally where I'm headed at the moment after packing on a few kilos after my recent holiday. It's really not fair that weight comes on so quickly and yet so hard to lose! 

For those making this recipe, you've find that it probably doesn't have as much sugar and butter as most brownie recipes but don't forget that you get a whole lot of natural sweetness from the dates. Aside from the dates looking like dead cockroaches, I really do find them quite tasty and adds sweetness to baking!