Banana Brownies

With the Grand Thanksgiving Feast approaching, I've been trying to be especially diligent during the past two weeks with minimalistic grocery shopping, putting to use items in the pantry, clearing space in the freezer, and generally tidying up odds and ends in anticipation of pre-holiday groceries and post-holiday leftovers. Last night, as Zach was playing Dragon Age and I was prepping supper ingredients, I decided to fix us something fun for dessert as we were planning on having an especially light and healthful mixture of steamed veggies and quinoa for dinner. Glancing across the kitchen, two very ripe bananas caught my eye, perched atop a bunch of green bananas in the fruit bowl. At first, I hesitated - we always have on hand an abundance of bananas in varying degrees of ripeness, and in effort to let nothing go to waste I had already made banana bread this week, and banana cookies last week, and I wondered if perhaps we had already exceeded our quota for banana baked goods... Yet still, I persisted. Perhaps... banana brownies?

Gooey, sweet fruit paired with dark chocolate sounded ideal indeed...

Banana Brownies

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 T cocoa powder
2 T applesauce
2 T light vegan marg or butter
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

~ Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat an 8X8 baking pan with cooking spray.
~ Whisk together the whole wheat flour, all=purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder, and set aside.
~ Cream the applesauce, light vegan marg or butter, and turbinado sugar until well blended.
~ Add the egg, vanilla, and mashed banana to the applesauce mixture, and beat well.
~ Gently stir in the dry ingredients.
~ Fold in the chocolate chips.
~ Pour the batter into the baking pan, and bake for 30 minutes - until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the brownies to cool for a bit to set, and then serve warm or cool, topped with whipped cream, of course... :-)