Friday, August 23, 2013

FLOURLESS ZUCCHINI BROWNIES

My friend Marg posted this recipe on facebook and it looked too good to pass up.  Plus I had zucchini from the garden as an excuse to make these brownies.  These brownies don't require flour and are gluten free.  In making these brownies I used agave syrup for the sugar and only used almond extract in place of vanilla or maple extract.  I also toasted the pecans beforehand while the oven was warming up to bake the brownies.  Since I had an open jar of cashew butter in the fridge, I used that instead of the almond butter.  You can also use peanut butter.  I found that I needed to bake these brownies for over 40 minutes.  I added a bit more than 1.5 cups of shredded zucchini so the brownies were extra moist.  It is no use to save ends of zucchini in the fridge as the likelihood of ends being used up is not going to occur.  The batter and brownies are dark as I used dark cocoa.

The brownies are delicious and won't last long between ourselves and friends inhaling this baking.


Mixing the batter.

Ready for sampling.



Brownies

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup natural almond butter
1 ½ cups grated zucchini
½ cup maple syrup or agave 
1/3 cup raw cacao or cocoa
1 egg (vegans use 1 egg replacement)
1 tsp vanilla extract (option - use almond extract)
1 tsp maple extract (or use vanilla)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup pecans 
pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Pour mixture into an 8×8 or 8X10 baking dish lined with parchment paper. Smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

adapted from http://www.beyondthepeel.net

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