Subbed Out Boxed Brownies

From Tuesday and reposted on the Friday Link Up over at Shoes to Shiraz!

Good Tuesday!  I took yesterday off from blogging since the kids had the day off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday.

If you had a three day weekend - I hope it was terrific!  

Subbed Out Boxed Brownies!

Last week I wanted brownies some-kinda-bad! Luckily, I had a Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge Brownie mix in my cabinet.  However- I wanted brownies minus all the fat.

Enter in mashed bananas.  (Because I was out of apple sauce and had no Greek yogurt!)

We always have bananas around here because my son has to eat them to survive (or so he thinks.)  I knew I could sub bananas in for oil but had never did it before.

Since I'm one who will try just about anything one time I decided why not?  If you opt to use bananas the best part of using them is that the conversion is equal to the amount of oil you would be using.  For these brownies the oil usage was 1/3 cup so I use 1/3 cup of mashed bananas instead.  I did up my water from 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup since the bananas aren't liquid.  Moisture is the key to yummy goodness.

The verdict:

Oh man....these were some heavenly brownies.  They were moist and thick and just plain out delicious.  I could taste a very tiny hint of banana (not all of it cooks through, you'll see a bit of banana in the picture at the end of this section) - but my daughter swears she tasted no banana at all.  So maybe it was in my head since I knew I had put banana in?

I iced the brownies with chocolate buttercream icing.

2 cups of powdered sugar

2 pads of butter

1 tablespoon of cocoa

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

3 tablespoons of milk

Mix together until you have the proper consistency.  

Where I cut the calories from oil I actually added them back in with icing.  My thinking?  At least I did not have the oil calories AND the icing calories bahahahaha.

Do you use subs when you bake to make things healthier?