Low-Calorie Brownie Recipes

These chickpea blondies are packed with peanuts and chocolate chips for a fudgy, fiber-packed treat.

Cocoa powder and brown sugar make this easy drop cookie recipe taste like rich brownies.

For bigger hits of chocolate goodness, use chopped bittersweet chocolate in place of the chips. Hold on to the leftover pumpkin puree--it's yummy stirred into your morning oatmeal or yogurt.

People likely won't even notice that these delicately nutty, just a little chocolaty, blondies are gluten-free. They use quinoa flour, which you can find in well-stocked supermarkets and natural-foods stores, in place of all-purpose flour. To make your own quinoa flour, grind raw quinoa into a powder in a clean coffee grinder. (Adapted from Quinoa Revolution by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming.)

We like to use chocolate with 60-72% cacao content in these rich, fudgelike brownies, as it imparts a deeper, fuller flavor than less-chocolaty choices. Dip these bite-size pieces of brownie into melted chocolate for an easy treat to satisfy your chocolate craving.

Applesauce is the secret ingredient that keeps these yummy chocolate brownies dense and chewy even without all the butter you would expect to find. We've used whole-wheat pastry flour for added fiber and nutrients and loaded the brownies with plenty of chocolate chips to keep them rich and satisfying. You won't even miss the 20 grams of fat we've lost in the makeover.

These not-too-sweet mini desserts combine the flavors of peanut butter cups and chocolate cake. Quinoa flour adds protein and makes these gluten-free, but feel free to substitute white whole-wheat flour instead.

One taste of these blondies and you'll see why using rye flour (yes, the same flour in rye bread) makes sense--the earthy grain dovetails well with the bittersweet chocolate chunks.

Whole-grain teff flour (made from a tiny ancient grain) has a nuance of cocoa flavor to start with, making it a natural choice for brownies. These gluten-free brownies are moist and satisfying, intensely chocolaty and have a tender texture.

This whole-grain peanut butter and jam blondie recipe has half the amount of brown sugar and butter as a traditional recipe and is made with 100% whole-wheat flour. The results: scrumptious toffee-flavored treats with fewer calories and less added sugars per serving.