Valentine Squash Brownies

Last year Mel and I came up with a no egg, no dairy, practically no guilt brownie that is packed full of zucchini (which contains antioxidants) and fibre! This was our first "Sneak Attack" recipe, as the majority of the recipe is zucchini. It took us five tries to finally come up with a recipe that had the perfect balance between sweetness and healthiness.
These are the perfect Valentine's day treat for your friends and loved ones as they taste yummy and are healthy! Since Valentine's day is a special holiday I topped them with icing so they can be extra sweet for your sweetie :P.

Ingredients:
13 tbsp (slightly less than a cup) semisweet chocolate chips
4 cups of shredded zucchini
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp chia seeds
3/4 cup sweetened apple sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup cocoa unsweetened
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oat bran
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon

(we used different flours to make it healthier and more fibre packed, and we also found this proportion worked best, but you can alternate this for all white flour, quinoa flour or oat flour)

Directions: 
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Step 2: Use a food processor and shred around 4 small zucchini's to make 4 cups of packed zucchini, and put in a bowl.

Step 3: Add the chocolate chips, vanilla, chia seeds, apple sauce and oil to the zucchini and mix well, making sure the chia seeds start to form a gel.



Step 4: Add all the dry ingredients and mix well. At this stage you may think there is not enough of the wet ingredients, but keep mixing and it will eventually all become wet. *Tip: when mixing use more of a pressing action to get the liquid out of the zucchini

Step 5: Spread in a 9x13 inch pan and cook for 45 minutes. (For the Valentine's day hearts I cooked them in a circle cake pan)

Step 6: Cut into squares or for Valentine's day use heart shaped cookie cutters!

The icing didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to. It tasted amazing but I didn't use an emulsifying agent so the coconut oil coagulated and you could see white flakes in the red icing (all you pharmacy students can empathize with how hard those emulsifying labs were!). If I would have left it a white icing though it would have been undetectable!

Icing:
1 cup frozen raspberries
3 tbsp coconut oil
1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Step 1: Cook the raspberries until completely soft. De-seed in a mesh colander or cheese cloth.

Step 2: Measure out 3 tbsp of the raspberry liquid (you can eat the rest that was left behind!) and put in a large bowl.

Step 3: Add the rest of the ingredients and mix it with an electric mixer. I then stored mine in the fridge for about 10 minutes then topped the brownies.

-A