Alana
I first made this recipe for a ladies’ night in with Roopa and a few of our other lady-friends, which was a potluck style event. Naturally Roops and I brought desserts, but there was a catch. A couple of the girls can’t do dairy, and a couple can’t do eggs. Hmm… So I was searching around for a dairy and egg free recipe that sounded good, but didn’t have really obscure ingredients. I’m not familiar with vegan baking the way Roopa is, so this was definitely a new experience for me.
When I was recipe browsing, I came across the zucchini brownie recipe and noticed it didn’t contain any milk or butter. Score! I already knew that you can use banana as a substitute for eggs, so I started to Google around for the correct ratio. The site that I looked at warned that using bananas can add a banana flavour (gasp! who knew?), but I didn’t really care because banana chocolate is delicious.
Check out all those mashed bananas! And apple sauce, yum!
Turns out this recipe is seriously delicious. The zucchini adds a lot of moisture, and the chocolate chips add a lot of… chocolate! I was tempted to not add chocolate chips to the batter the first time, but a note from the original recipe suggested that was a bad idea. I stuck with the chocolate chips and have not looked back!
I used a fine grater for the zucchini to avoid weird textures in the final product.
Zucchini Brownies
Adapted from Texanerin’s Chocolate Zucchini Brownie recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 banana
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- ¾ cup sugar
- ¼ cup unsweetened apple sauce
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- 1 ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 cups zucchini (300-320 grams; 1 medium-large or 2 small is what I used)
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- ½ cup mini chocolate chips (to sprinkle on the top)
Directions:
- Prepare an 8×8 pan with parchment paper or by greasing it (I used shortening), and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a large bowl mix together the eggs, vanilla, sugar, and apple sauce. Let sit.
- Mash your banana, and prepare the zucchini by peeling and grating it (doing this now will allow the sugar to dissolve in the liquid ingredients).
- In a second bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to ensure the dry ingredients are evenly incorporated.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix until combined. You will have a thick and pasty batter.
- Stir in the zucchini using a folding motion, followed by the chocolate chips.
- Pour the batter in to the pan. Smooth the top with a spatula then sprinkle the mini chocolate chips on top.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean*.
* The original recipe listed the bake time as 30-35 minutes, but I found that I had to bake mine for closer to the 40-45 minute mark for the toothpick to come out clean. Also note that the toothpick can come out sticky, as long as there isn’t raw batter on it.
Chateau Gateau 