Bettyanne Brownies (Frugal Food Thursday)

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I hope you enjoyed last week's It's a Keeper Thursday, but now we're back to Frugal Food Thursday again.  Welcome to all of our new readers who found Frugal Follies last week!

This week, I'm featuring my Bettyanne Brownies!


Last week, I posted a review and giveaway for a Bella Viva dried fruit and nut assortment. In order to do this review, I received the same assortment - a total of 9 pounds of fruits and nuts. Some of them have been eaten out of hand, but I still have quite a lot. And the kids just aren't all that excited about eating dried fruit.

So I decided to try sneaking some of the fruit into brownies. I picked the Bettyanne plums, as I felt the taste and texture would complement the chocolate the best.  But aren't prunes dried plums?  These aren't pruny-tasting at all.  I guess prunes are made from a different variety of plums than these plums are. But if you can't find dried plums, prunes would be fine.

I rehydrated a few of the plums, then chopped them in my food processor and added them to the brownie batter.  I use the Toll House recipe for brownies, as it uses cocoa, which is much less expensive than using baking chocolate or other chocolate sources.

And how did it come out? Two of my kids really like them. The other noticed the taste was a little different and now doesn't want to eat them. Oh, well, two out of three ain't bad, right?

BETTYANNE BROWNIES

6 Bettyanne or other dried plums (or prunes)
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup butter, melted
2 tbsp water
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup baking cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place dried plums in a bowl of warm water for about 15 minutes; drain.  Place rehydrated plums in a food processor with the chopping blade and process for 30 seconds.

In a large bowl, mix sugar, butter, water, eggs, and vanilla.  In a seperate bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just moistened.  Mix in the dried plums.

Spoon mixture into a greased 9x13 rectangular pan.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 24 brownies.

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