Low Fat Fudgy Banana Brownies

Today I made brownies and decided to add in a few mushed up bananas because they were going brown and no one wanted to eat them... how sad :(
But when I put them in the brownies no one seemed to mind that they were old bananas as the brownies where practically inhaled, they were eaten up so quickly. I got the recipe from my Becel Heart Healthy cookbook. I love my new cookbook, I got it on sale at Cole's Bookstore (during their sidewalk sale) for only $2.99 WOW what an amazing deal I couldn't pass it up. I also bought a cookbook omnibus from the Vancouver Sun Newspaper at Ming Wo, it also has some cool (yet old) recipes... for canning, making jam, doing pot roasts and such. I'm so asian :P I love buying things on sale. I mean why would you pay full price when you can just wait for a good deal to come along.

Anyways, back to the brownies... I know the picture I took of them makes them look like banana bread squares or blondies with speckles of chocolate in them but that's only because I ran out of cocoa powder :( ... but have no fear they turned out fine.

Fudgy Banana Brownies

Ingredients
2 tbsp Becel margarine (or any margarine)
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp each: baking soda, salt
1 1/2 large bananas, mashed

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Spray an 8 inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Dust with cocoa, shaking out excess.

2. In a small saucepan, melt margarine on low heat. Remove from heat and stir in cocoa, sugar, egg applesauce and vanilla. beating until smooth. Gently stir in flour, baking soda and salt until well combined.

3. Pour into prepared pan and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until set (toothpick place in center should come out clean). Cool completely and cut into 16 squares with hot, wet knife. Store in the refrigerator.

Note: Allowing the brownies to completely cool and cutting with the hot, wet knife ensures that your squares turn out beautifully without any surface cave-ins.

Variation: I decided to use egg beaters instead of the egg to remove the cholesterol from the recipe and also substituted the granulated sugar for the same amount of unpacked confectioner's sugar (it tastes just as sweet but results in fewer calories!). The addition of banana was my own small variation and you should add the mashed up fruit to the wet batter NOT THE DRY!