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