Whilst browsing the Food Network Canada website, I stumbled upon the Foodtv.ca Cooking Club Challenge: a monthly online challenge to make a specific recipe from one of their shows, with some cookbook prizes for the winners. The challenge for May is Michael Smith’s Banana Brownies, and I just happened to have all the ingredients in my kitchen already, so I thought I’d join in.

The original recipe is somewhat very high in calories and fat, so I made a few modifications:

• Halved the recipe to make a smaller batch.
• Substituted semi-sweet chocolate for dark chocolate (from necessity – it was all I had in stock)
• Reduced the fat by substituting half the butter with the same weight in unsweetened applesauce.
• Made individual brownies by pouring the batter into a muffin pan – my half-sized batch filled 12 muffin cups (3/4 full) perfectly.
• Reduced the baking time to 1hr 10 mins to compensate for the smaller cake size.

They turned out very well – not overly sweet or rich, nicely dense, and very tasty. The banana flavour is quite noticeable, although I think that may have been due to my bananas being very ripe! With a bit of whipped cream on the top (which is entirely justified with the lower fat mods and smaller portion size) they make a very nice dessert. Have a virtual taste:

To enter the Cooking Club Challenge, you just submit a photo and a description of your creation. I submitted mine and now I just have to wait and see…

I really don’t expect to win, but the club is a nice motivator to try out a new recipe every month!