Zucchini Season
If you are from the Canadian prairies and if you have a garden (or know someone who has a garden) and especially if you live in the country, where a garden has a lot of room to grow big vines, you most certainly know about zucchini season.
One zucchini plant seems to produce enough to feed a neighbourhood but there are different varieties and colours of zucchini so, if you have the garden space, you may need to plant a light green variety and a dark green variety and a yellow variety and maybe one extra one just in case the gophers or the racoons or some other pesky critter decides that they need to sample the produce.
Now, when you do your daily garden tour to harvest the vegetables that are ready (and maybe to pick a bouquet of flowers) you find several zucchinis each and every day! How can you possibly use ALL of this zucchini? Well, you can give it to family, friends or neighbours, if they don’t have a garden with tons of zucchini. If you happen to miss the garden tour for a few days and have a large dog who likes vegetables, they will appreciate a few overgrown zucchini. You can use them in salads, stews, soups, loaves, muffins, marmalades or, my all time favourite, a savoury zucchini pie. If that is not enough ideas, you can make a delicious, healthy and not too sweet Zucchini Brownie.
Healthy Zucchini Brownies Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups shredded zucchini (use large hole size of box grater…pack loosely in cup to measure)
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup butter melted
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
Preparation
- Place zucchini in a colander while you are getting other ingredients ready.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C) and line 8 x 8 baking dish with unbleached parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, add egg, butter, honey and pure vanilla extract; whisk to combine.
- Give zucchini a gentle squeeze but do not ring out completely, add to bowl and stir.
- In a separate bowl add cocoa powder, baking soda and salt to flour and combine.
- Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix gently until combined.
- Transfer batter into prepared baking dish and level with spatula. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the centre is barely jiggly. Do not over bake as brownies will have more of a cake consistency. A toothpick inserted has to come out somewhat not clean but if centre is too jiggly bake a bit more.
- Remove from the oven and let cool for about an hour. Lift by the parchment paper flaps and transfer to a cooling rack to cool off completely. Then cut into 16 squares and enjoy!
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