Chocolate Cobbler

Chocolate Cobbler with Ice Cream and Pecans

I crave chocolate on a regular basis and I figured I should make something myself instead of buying a gazillion-calorie chocolate cake at the store. So I started to scour the internet for an easy recipe that is quick to make and doesn’t require too many ingredients. This search yielded a recipe by Susan Hawkins at Tasty Kitchen. But you know me, I couldn’t leave it well enough alone and had to modify something. Because I’ve been in an experimental mood lately as it comes to my dessert, I thought about making this a little healthier. I have lots of room to play here, but this time I thought of switching out All-Purpose flour for Whole Wheat Pastry Flour and white sugar for Sucanat (I also removed the total amount of “sugar” by a quarter cup). Certainly the texture changed from the original, but I like a little nuttier and denser texture. It was more cake-y than fudge-y. Next time, I’ll work on eliminating butter. I wonder if applesauce would work (it worked wonderfully instead of oil in a boxed brownie mix).

Ingredients:
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
2 TSP baking powder
¼ TSP salt
7 TBSP cocoa powder
1 cup sucanat
½ cups milk
1/3cups butter (melted)
1-½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cups light brown sugar (packed)
1-½ cup hot water
a handful of nuts, your preference, totally optional (I used pecans)

Steps:
1. Stir flour, baking powder, salt, 3 tablespoons of the cocoa, and 3/4 cup of sucanat in a large bowl. Reserve the remaining cocoa and sugar.
2. Add the milk, melted butter, and vanilla to the flour mixture. Mix until smooth.
3. Pour the mixture into an ungreased 8-inch baking dish. I used a round, glass pie dish.
4. For the topping, mix the remaining sucanat (it should be about a 1/4 cup), the brown sugar, and 4 tablespoons of cocoa. Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the batter that’s in the baking dish. It looked like there was way too much topping, but don’t be afraid of it. It’s yummy and worked out well.
5. Pour the hot water over all. DO NOT STIR! (I was a little afraid of this the first time I made it; it looked horrible, but turned out really great.)
6. In an oven preheated to 350 degrees, bake for about 40 minutes (or until the center is set).

Susan recommends letting it sit for a bit so I let it sit for about 5 minutes and then dug in.