Chocolate Yoghurt Brownies
I am a bad Mother, according to Australian researchers.
All this time I thought I was some wise, hip Mumma, but apparently I was doing the wrong thing. I am deceitful and encouraging of bad habits that will never be overcome. This is NOT something that a Mother wants to hear is it?
I have bragged about this habit I have formed so often on the pages of this blog it has become a bit of a “thing” that is even possibly expected of me.
I am a vegetable hider and according to this article “the reason you shouldn’t hide vegies in your kids food” I need to take a long hard look at myself. I am mildly depressed about it. I mean, I do worry that my teen doesn’t help himself to vegetables when he has to find a snack, and I do wring my hands when he is given the choice between a salad wrap and a nutella sandwich, because you won’t win a prize for guessing which one he will ALWAYS choose. It all happened under my over caring nose.
It’s not like I didn’t try. I am an obsessive cook after all. He has been to every restaurant you can imagine in a lot of places. I am easily bored never cooking the same thing twice in a row (unless making up a recipe), if you can name it, I have cooked it and stuck it on a plate in front of his face.
It all started off well………. before he had teeth. Let me see, there were mushroom soups and mashed avocado with ricotta and pumpkin puree but somewhere between the teeth and the other side of that he gave up on vegetables and that’s where the deception began. My Chicken and Parmesan balls with green sauce and Braised chicken with fregola or Cauliflower fried rice and my latest shameful effort Chicken, feta and spinach pie are now just sad and embarrassing examples of how I have been hiding vegetables and ruining his life.
His Dad was the same. For the first number of years I had to hide veggies for him too. His Dad seems to be OK now and so I have every hope that my teen will eventually be an upstanding citizen that chooses a good square meal (with or without hidden vegetables), over a nutella sandwich.
Call it lazy teens or male blindness but when I am not home to hide the veggies in his food he seems to have male fridge blindness. He doesn’t see the healthy things I have left in the front almost swinging from the door as it is opened. I can’t accept all the blame because we have done lots of cooking together and he is a great shopper. From the age of 3 he helped do all the shopping for clients when I had a catering company. He could choose the best capsicums & tomatoes, at the market perched in the trolley, by eyeing the display and feeling for firmness. My God he was cute.
I have read points 1-5 in the article and I believe I have covered these. Getting them (veggie phobic children) involved in cooking, don’t fight or force, try cooking lots of different things… ah duh, and make sure that you set an example…hell yeah, I’m a veggie muncher, but I have never subscribed to number 5. Just give up. This is not my style. I would so much prefer to hide veggies and carry on just like I have all these years to produce a gangly healthy teen who has very little interest in fast food and shuns sweet fizzy drinks of any kind.
I think all this talk calls for a special dessert. This dessert will have a celebration of hidden fruity ingredients as well as chocolate – also good for you, at least we think so in my house.
Instead of just using plain yoghurt I am stirring through a new yoghurt I found, Rachels Strawberry and Rhubarb yoghurt because it is fruity and not too sweet. It seems to give these Brownies a lingering Strawberry appeal.
You can use plain yoghurt if you like but this version just happens to fit in with my well worn style of hidden goodness….
Chocolate Yoghurt Brownies
Ingredients
- 220 gm butter unsalted
- 200 gm caster sugar 1 Aust cup
- 100 gm dark chocolate chopped, I used 70%
- 100 gm plain flour 1/2 Aust cup
- 50 gm dark cocoa 1/2 Aust cup
- 130 gm Yoghurt Strawberry and Rhubarb Yoghurt or Raspberry & mango stirred well to mix all the fruit in- 1/2 Aust cup
- 3 whole eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Icing
- 100 gm chocolate dark
- 50 ml cream
Instructions
- Oven temperature 170C/ 340F
- Use a tin that makes 12 square muffins or a brownie slab tin 25x18cm/10x 7inches
- Put the flour, cocoa and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine and get rid of any lumps.
- Melt the butter and chocolate in a large bowl that fits into your microwave (or melt over a double boiler), until just melted. Then add the sugar and stir very well.
- Cool a little if quite warm.
- Whisk the eggs, vanilla and the yoghurt together in another bowl and then whisk into the chocolate mixture till well incorporated.
- Add the dry ingredients and mix till you have a smooth batter.
- Pour into the lined tins or slab and bake for 20-25 minutes for individual cakes like mine or 30-35 min for the slab tin. Touch the top with the tips of your fingers. It will be just set .
- Cool the brownies completely before icing
Icing
- Put the cream into a heat proof jug and microwave for a minute till just hot. If using the stove top bring it just to near boiling point and take off the heat. Pour the chopped chocolate into the jug or pot and stir till smooth.
- Spoon the icing over the brownies or spread over the entire slab if you are making it this way.
Notes
!If the cream is too hot the chocolate will have a white streaky appearance
!If you aren't confident making praline to decorate, crush hard butterscotch lollies in the blender or in a tea towel with a hammer- instant praline!
These look delish! Love your square muffin too!
I have a great brownie recipe with zucchini in it. Perhaps your veggie-ignoring son would eat that. I have a feeling he is a healthy enough young man, and what will be, will be.
I feel your pain. I didn’t eat super healthy, eat that horrible vegetable based first birthday cake with fruit juice sweetened frosting and nurse for a year and a half to have my teen boy destroy his body with junk food. Don’t hide the veggies but he complains about most. Have started hiding foraged greens in salad though and other odd veggies in soup just for fun, to see what I can get away with.
Can’t say that your brownies are any way healthy though with a small amount of fruity yogurt considering the large quantity of butter and sugar. And if you yogurt is like ours here in the US, the fruit ones are pretty much candy. But might try added actual strawberries and rhubarb to brownies, maybe ones sweetened more by bananas than refined sugar.
I can only imagine how I’d be judged and what sort of kids I’d end up with so I wouldn’t worry-stuffing vegetables is not such a bad thing is it?
What a superb idea and superb brownies. Love your step by step photographs. Lovely!!
ive just whipped up some unhealthy brownies, must try this out next time i buy yoghurt for my smoothies!
Oh how I smiled at this post. I don’t have children but have enough friends with little ones to know they would relate to your experiences. I figure vegetables in ANY form are a good thing, and if you’ve covered all the bases with offering them and trying them straight up, veggies in desserts are a nice twist 😉
I think that one of the best fruits that combine well with chocolate is strawberry. I’m glad you used a flavoured yoghurt in this recipe. I will give this a shot! Thanks for sharing!
Julie
Gourmet Getaways
I’m guilty of hiding vegetables too! I don’t think a cook has to reveal all her secrets! I love the look of your brownies – that drizzled chocolate is gorgeous xx
My son wouldn’t eat vegetables and I didn’t hide them so I suppose that’s a fail too? He cooked and loved cooking but never cooked a vegetable that he liked. He grew up to run and own restaurants and now he does eat vegetables but I don’t think they’re ever first in his mind.
He’d LOVE your brownies!
Check out some of my sneaky tactics here Tania 🙂
http://intolerantchef.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/secret-ingredient-cake.html
Aww screw em Tania! The kids will grow up eventually, or if not, be like my hubby who has me to look out for him and make sure I sneak veggies into his meals. I actually get a huge amount of perverse pleasure seeing how many I can get him to eat 🙂 He does suspect, but if he can’t positively prove it I can always deny it! Great brownies indeed, rich and chocolatey xox
Bad Mothers Unite. They all grow up in the end. Nothing good about flavoured yoghurt, though these sound fabulous.
Don’t beat yourself up! I have just returned from a two week Food Tour of Vietnam to find that my son (No 2 of three) ate pizza for the whole time I think! The way I look at it is ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’! We as mothers do what we can….and he is off to play 90 minutes of rugby today!
By the way I have cooked Vietnamese food since I have been back – tofu, fish, noodles, garlic, ginger, chilli and he has loved it! (He doesn’t eat fruit either)