Zucchini Brownies

Are you wondering what to do with that bumper crop of zucchini?  I know there are a lot of uses for zucchini, and every year I am trying to find new ways to use it.  I ran across this recipe on Pinterest (I know I'm not the only one here with a pinterest problem, and I will see you at the Pinterest Anonymous meeting...) and I slightly modified it.  They are so delicious and healthy, and you won't even miss the flour, oil, sugar, and everything else that goes in to a traditional brownie.  I did make these with dark chocolate and they weren't as sweet as I like my brownies, next time I may try milk chocolate.

 

Ingredients:

Hazelnut Butter* - 1 cup

Grated Zucchini - 1 1/2 cups

Raw Honey** - 1/3 cup

Egg - 1

Vanilla - 1 tsp

Baking Soda - 1 tsp

Cinnamon - 1 tsp

Nutmeg (I like fresh ground!) - 1/2 tsp

Dark Baking Chocolate - 1 5.3oz bar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8X8 pan (I like to use coconut oil, but you can use whatever you like).

Melt your chocolate.  I melted mine in the microwave in 2, 30 second intervals.  I was given a bar of Green & Black's Organic (pictured below), Dark Baking Chocolate with 72% Cocoa, so that is what I used.

In a separate bowl from the chocolate, mix together the egg and the nut butter. *You can use whatever nut butter you prefer.  I had a container of hazelnut butter from the last time I went to Sauders, so that is what I used.  Next mix in all of the ingredients, except for the zucchini.  **We had a jar of Raw Pomegranate Honey,*** so I used that.  Once you have mixed the ingredients well, add the zucchini.  Spread in your greased pan and bake for 35 - 45 minutes.  Mine baked for 42 minutes.  You should be able to test the center with a tooth pick, and have it come out clean.

These brownies are amazing.  You would never guess that they have zucchini in them.  Stay tuned for more zucchini recipes!

***I use iHerb to order a lot of stuff that is hard to find in my area.  They have really good, quality ingredients at a good price.  I will look for my discount code and update this post so that you can get $5 off of your first order.  If I haven't changed this, feel free to contact me and I will find it for you, if you are interested.

This recipe was adapted from http://www.delightedmomma.com/search/label/recipes.

Ricotta

Do you buy your ricotta by the cottage cheese?  The stuff that has been sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks already, and has a shelf life for a month or more longer?  Try this simple recipe.  It is only two ingredients, and it is so easy and delicious.  If you have never had fresh ricotta, you don't know what you are missing.  It has a creamy, delicate flavor, and is so cost effective to make.

Ingredients:

Milk - 1 Gallon

Cider Vinegar - 1/4 Cup

Yup, seriously, that is it!

In a pan large enough to fit 1 gallon + some wiggle room, poor the gallon of milk.  Make sure that you are not using a copper pan.  The milk doesn't react well in copper.  Poor 1/4 cup of vinegar in the milk.  You can use any kind, but I prefer the delicate flavor of the cider vinegar.  Heat the milk to about 180 degrees, stirring until you see little white flecks (curd) forming.  Stop stirring at this point so that you don't break up the curds.  If you do not have a thermometer don't worry, you should heat the milk to just below the boiling point.  You will see the milk separate and all of the curd will float to the top.  Let it rest for 5 minutes or so and then with a slotted spoon, ladle in to a strainer, lined with cheese cloth.  If you do not have cheese cloth you can use a clean dish towel.  Let the ricotta drain in the cheese cloth until it is at the desired consistency.  Depending on what you are going to use the ricotta for will depend on how firm you want it to be.  If you are using your ricotta in a pasta dish, drain for 10 minutes or so.  If you would like it to be a little firmer, say for a cheesecake drain for 40 minutes or so.  Now pat yourself on the back, you just made ricotta!  Season as you wish.  Use within a week.

Chocolate Syrup

My kids will go through three gallons of milk in a week or less if you would let them drink chocolate milk all day.  Most chocolate syrups you will buy at the store contain a lot of ingredients that most people probably can't even pronounce.  I wanted to make a chocolate syrup that I didn't feel bad about my kids drinking.  I found a lot of recipes that the number one ingredient was sugar, or corn syrup.  I wanted to use a natural sweetener, so I thought I would try using honey and maple syrup.  The results were great, my kids love it, and it is only four ingredients.  It doesn't get much easier than that!

Ingredients:

Pure Maple Syrup - 1 Cup

Honey - 1/2 Cup

Unsweetened Cocoa Powder - 3/4 Cup

Water - 1 Cup 

Combine and whisk all ingredients in a saucepan.  Heat on high to a boil and boil for one minute.  Allow to cool and refrigerate.  Really, its that easy!  If you don't care if your sweetener is natural or not, you could certainly use regular old white sugar.  You could also use all maple syrup, all honey, or even all agave nectar. 

Strawberry Jam

When I decided that I wanted to make jam, I knew that I didn’t want to use any sugar or pectin, but I wanted it to be really tasty.  So I found a recipe on one of my favorite blogs and modified it to my taste.  You can certainly use sugar if you would like.  The recipe is pretty basic, and then you can add other flavorings.

Here is a list of some sugar substitutes:

Honey

Agave Nectar

Maple Syrup

Molasses

This is where I purchased my jars.  Most of the jars are able to be used for canning.  I plan on giving these away as gifts, so I wanted to have some nice jars.  The shipping is pretty high, so if you want to make an order it might be a good idea to do a group order with some friends.

http://www.specialtybottle.com/

Basic Recipe:

Fresh Local Strawberries – 3 pounds

Apple – pealed and shredded  (apples contain a lot of natural pectin!)

Lemon – half

Sugar in some form listed above – 2 cups

Combine all ingredients and mash together.  Heat on med-high heat until the mixture is boiling.  Boil until the jam gets to the jelling stage (this took me about an hour), stirring frequently.  You can test the jam by putting a plate in the freezer and spooning a small amount of jam onto the chilled plate.  If you can push it with your finger and it is thick then it is good.  At this point you can take the jam off of the heat and either ladle hot jam into sterilized jars and process in a water bath for 10 minutes, removing from the water and allowing to rest for 12 hours; or you can let the jam cool, ladle in to containers and freeze.  Because of the low sugar content of this jam it will only keep in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks, but I don’t think that will be a problem.  We have never been jam eaters, but since having made homemade jam, we haven’t kept a jar for more than 2 or 3 days.

Modifications:

Strawberry Maple Jam

Follow directions for basic recipe, using maple syrup as the sugar.  During the last couple of minutes of cooking, add 2 teaspoons of cinnamon.  Process as listed above.

Strawberry Vanilla Jam

Follow directs for basic recipe, using agave nectar as the sugar.  While cooking, split a vanilla bean down the middle.  Scrape the insides from the bean and add both the bean and the insides to the jam mixture.  Once you take the jam off of the heat, carefully take the bean pod out of the jam* and add 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract.  Stir and process as listed above.

I purchased my vanilla beans from Amazon.com.  They are really great quality and you can't beat the price.  At the grocery store you will pay about $5 a piece for vanilla beans.  Through Amazon I got about 50 (I think it was actually 52) beans for $24.99.  Lets do that math.  $24.99/50 = .4998, or about $.50 each.  That is 10 times cheaper! 

* Save the spent bean pod for another application.  Just rinse off jam, allow to dry and store in an airtight container.

This recipe has been modified from this blg http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/05/10/how-to-can-some-jam-a-simple-method-without-pectin/