Fudge Brownies

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350
degrees. Lightly coat a baking pan with cooking spray.

In a small saucepan, combine the butter and chopped chocolate and set over
very low heat until melted. Stir the mixture and set aside to cool. In a
medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder,
salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Measure the sugar into the large bowl of an
electric mixer and beat in the cooled butter-chocolate mixture. Add the egg
plus whites, vanilla, and water and beat well. Add the dry ingredients and
mix on low speed just until blended. Don’t overbeat. The batter will be
thick.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top, and bake for 22 to
25 minutes; 23 minutes is usually right for me. When done, the top will
look dry and a wooden pick inserted near the edge will come out with a few
crumbs but the center will look slightly gooey. Cool in the pan and cut
into squares.

I have been trying for a couple of years to produce a brownie worthy of the
name with less fat and less solid chocolate. My taste testers finally agree
that this is it – a great brownie they would never suspect of being lower
in anything. I have cut the classic 58 percent down to 31 percent calories
from fat and eliminated 87 calories, 10 g fat, and 22 mg cholesterol from
each brownie.

When traditional proportions are disrupted, textures become moist and cakey
at best or dry, insipid, and tough at worst. One rule emerges clearly: The
fewer ingredients, the better the brownie. Avoid the usual low-fat
stand-ins: applesauce, yogurt, corn syrup, canola oil. Use butter, but
less, and replace most of the solid chocolate with rich-tasting
Dutch-processed cocoa; retain at least 1 ounce of solid chocolate, however,
for a more complex chocolate taste. A few tricks: Cake flour produced a
more tender crumb than all-purpose, and melting the butter with the
chocolate, as opposed to creaming the solid butter with the sugar, gave a
fudgier crumb. A touch of baking powder seems to enhance the crunch of the
top crust.

Faced with the choice of adding high-fat chopped nuts or keeping the 1/4
cup butter, there was no contest; nuts put us over the top in fat content.
However, if you feel deprived without them, sprinkle about 3 tablespoons of
finely chopped walnuts on top before baking; the changes are modest: 33
percent calories from fat, plus 9 calories and 1 g fat per brownie.
NOTES : (Courtesy of Let Them Eat Cake by Susan Purdy)