Fudgy Zucchini Brownies

Three years ago Champa started an event called Bake-a-Thon where she did a month long baking marathon in the month of December. Following year, she modified the rules and made it 3 days a week for the month of December. This year Champa is not going to join the bake-a-thon and Valli asked some of us if we would be interested in joining her. Since it is only 3 days a week, it sounded doable and I am joining the group of bakers for this year's Bake-a-Thon. This month I will be posting a bake every Monday, Wednesday & Friday, a total of 14 bakes starting today and ending on the 31st.

For the first bake, I have fudgy zucchini brownie that can easily be made vegan. In fact it is a vegan recipe but I substituted non vegan ingredients just for convenience. I used regular chocolate chips instead of vegan chocolate chips and dairy butter instead of non-dairy butter. I was surprised there is something called vegan chocolate! That is something new I learned from this recipe! I will look out for this vegan chocolate next I go chocolate shopping!

Other than the above mentioned substitution of ingredients, I followed the recipe as given. Oh, I made half the recipe and since I did not have a small square pan, I baked the brownie in a 6″ round pan. I love chocolate and I liked this fudgy brownie though it was a bit on the sweeter side. Despite having a sweet tooth, it was a bit too sweet for me. That could be because I used semi-sweet chocolate chips. Though my apple sauce says no sugar added, I am unsure if the sweetness was from the apple sauce or the semi-sweet choco chips. Regardless, we liked the brownie and finished it off the same day.

Sources: here
Total Time: 50 – 65 minutes
Preparation: 10 – 15 minutes
Bake Time: 40 – 50 minutes
Yields: 9

Ingredients:

• 4 oz. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (for vegan, use vegan chocolate chips)
• ½ stick ~ ¼ cup Unsalted Butter (for vegan, non-dairy butter)
• ¾ cup Granulated Sugar (check note below)
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 1 cup shredded Zucchini (unpacked) or ¾ medium – large Zucchini shredded
• ¼ cup Applesauce
• ½ cup (63-65 grams) All Purpose Flour
• ¼ tsp. Baking Powder
• ¼ tsp. Salt

Preparation:

• Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper so that it hangs over each side. Spray cooking spray and keep aside. I did not have a small square pan and used a 6” round pan. If making double the recipe, use 8×8” pan.
• In a double broiler melt chocolate and butter stirring it occasionally until melted. I placed a glass bowl with chocolate & butter on a saucepan of boiling/steaming water and melted the chocolate. Once the chocolate bowl is placed on a saucepan, put the flame on simmer. Once the chocolate melts, keep it aside and let it cool for about 10 minutes.
• Grate or shred the zucchini and puree it in a blender with applesauce.
• Take a bowl and mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Keep it aside.
• Add sugar to chocolate mixture and mix it well.
• Add zucchini puree to chocolate mixture and stir.
• Stir in vanilla extract.
• Fold in the flour to the chocolate mixture.
• Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 – 50 minutes. I baked for 40 minutes. The brownie is going to be soft, little gooey and should be slightly under baked. When a knife or tooth pick inserted in the middle should come out moist with crumbs sticking to it.
• Cool the brownie cake completely before cutting. It will take 30 minutes to up to an hour for it to cool. I cut my brownies ½ hour into to cooling as I wanted to take some pictures before the sunset. 🙂
• When ready to cut the brownie, pull out the brownie cake by pulling up the parchment paper. Cut the cake into 1 ½“ – 2” pieces. Since I used a round pan, I trimmed off the corners to make it a square and then cut it into smaller squares.
• Serve the brownies as it is or with some vanilla ice-cream.

Note:

• Sugar – Brownies were too sweet for my taste. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips and next time I will either use less sugar or look for unsweetened chocolate chips.
• Pan - I used a 6″ round pan as I did not have a small square or rectangular pan. For double this recipe, one would need a 8×8″ pan.

This day in 2009 - Snow Flecked Brownies

Bake-a-thon 2014