Our son loves chocolate and he asks for homemade brownies every week. That is not happening. Knowing that brownies are a ‘sometime’ food, the other night, he asked for chocolate zucchini brownies. Emphasis was placed on the word zucchini as he handed me the tablet with a recipe he had googled. I liked his thought process, but didn’t care for the recipe, so the kids and I got creative and came up with this:
Not quite a brownie – this is more of a brownie/cake hybrid. Super moist with a rich chocolaty flavor, and if you don’t tell – no one will know it’s packed with veggies. My family loved it. Here’s the recipe. Note: There are many approximations as we were creating as we went along, plus 4 and 8 year olds did the measuring. (It was a fun mess!)
Ingredients
- 1 stick butter
- 1 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- Pure vanilla extract (~2 tsp.)
- 2 cups flour
- 3 tablespoons cocoa (We used TollHouse brand)
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- ~ ½ tsp. salt
- 2 avg size zucchini
- ½ bag chocolate chips (~ 5 oz. We used milk chocolate chips)
- Cool whip light
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a mixer, cream the softened butter and sugar until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla extract. Blend till combined.
- In a dry ingredients bowl, sift together the flour and cocoa powder. Stir the baking soda and salt into the dry mixture.
- With mixer on low, add the dry ingredients to the wet until combined. Set aside.
- Clean and puree the zucchini. (This yielded a little shy of 2 cups of a very wet puree.)
- Add to the batter and mix till combined. Stir in about 1/3 of a bag of chocolate chips.
- Spread mixture into a greased 9″x13″ glass pan. Smooth the batter with a spatula. Sprinkle more chocolate chips across the top and bake until a toothpick inserted about 1 inch from the edge comes out clean. (This took 25 mins).
- Remove from oven and let cool. Using a serrated knife, cut into 18 squares. The cake will be so moist; you will need a spatula to remove the pieces from the pan.
Single layer serving: Serve the square with a dollop of Cool Whip Light.
Double layer serving (pictured):Place a square on your plate, “frost” the layer with Cool Whip Light, place a second square on top and finish it off with a dollop of Cool Whip Light.
Notes:
The zucchini adds a lot of moisture. For a less moist cake, shred the zucchini, (instead of pureeing it), and pat some of the moisture away before adding to the batter. Since this cake was for and partially created by the kids, we kept it simple – i.e. vanilla extract, milk chocolate chips, no nuts etc. Here are some ideas to change it up:
- Grown Folk Chocolate Zucchini Creation: Add walnuts and use bittersweet or dark chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate chips. To kick up the flavor, add some expresso or a few tablespoons of amaretto liquer to the batter – hmmmmm…..
- Chocolate Mint Zucchini Creation: Replace some of the chocolate chips with Andes Crème de Menthe Baking Chips
- Chocolate Almond Zucchini Creation: Add some almond extract and sprinkle toasted slivered almonds on top of the servings
- Chocolate Zucchini Creation: Serve the single layer version with a bit of Blue Bell Light Homemade Vanilla instead of Cool Whip (a bit of Blue Bell makes almost any dessert better)
BTW: Still working on the zucchini brownie version…