Try Something New Tuesday: Zucchini Brownies

After last week's epic fail, I wanted to make sure this week's Try Something New Tuesday was a success. So I went with what I do best: chocolate.

I had recently been eyeing this recipe for Zucchini brownies. Ever since I learned how to shred veggies with my food processor, I had been looking for the chance to do it again. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.

First, I recruited two helpers.

We put the littles down for naps, and then we got busy.

Here's the ensemble.

We started things off with my favorite new past time: zucchini shredding! The girls were as impressed as I was. 

After shredding the zucchini, I decided to give it a couple of extra pulses in the food processor to make the zucchini more discreet.

Next, we combined the oil, applesauce (I like to substitute half the oil in recipes with unsweetened applesauce), 2 tsp. vanilla and sugar.

We stirred that until it was well blended.

Next we added the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. 

We stirred that until it was well combined. The batter was relatively dry at this point which I had read in the recipe's reviews was normal. A lot of your moisture comes from the zucchini.

Finally, we added the zucchini.

The batter became much more moist once this was stirred in. We spread the batter evenly in a greased 9x13" pan.

We baked these at 350 degrees for about 24 minutes. I had read in the reviews that it was important not to overbake, so I decided it would be better if they were a little undercooked. 

Next came the hard part: we had to let them sit and cool. And just stare at them. Without eating any. I even stuck them in the freezer for awhile to try and speed this process up. When they were sufficiently cooled, we got to work on the icing. We considered making our staple Best Ever Brownie Icing recipe, but we decided to get a little crazy and use the one that came with the recipe. 

First, we melted the butter and cocoa in a medium bowl and stirred until smooth. Then, we let it cool for a couple of minutes.

Next, we added the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. I ended up adding about 1/2 cup extra powdered sugar because the icing seemed a little thin to me. Maybe I didn't let the butter/cocoa combination cool long enough? At any rate, the extra sugar certainly didn't hurt!

We spread the icing over the brownies before cutting.

Oh. My. These brownies did not disappoint! I'll let the photos do the talking.

The kids and I ate well over half the pan the day we made them!!! Hey, they have zucchini in them so that makes them healthy, right?!? Seriously, the little ones didn't even notice that the zucchini was there. If your child is particularly sensitive to new textures, you could puree the zucchini instead of shredding it.

I will point out that these brownies are more cake-like than fudgy, but we loved them all the same. This is definitely a recipe we plan to make again. I didn't bother calculating the nutrition on these because, quite frankly, I didn't want to know!

Zucchini Brownies

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1-1/2 cups white sugar (I used a little less; I think you could easily get by with 1 cup)
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup whole wheat and 1 cup all-purpose)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1-1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 cups shredded zucchini (I found that 2 medium zucchinis was about right)

Icing

• 6 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla

~Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13" baking dish. In a large bowl, mix together the oil, applesauce, sugar and 2 tsp. vanilla until well blended. Add the flour, 1/2 cup cocoa, baking soda and salt. Stir until well combined. Mixture will be fairly dry. Fold in the zucchini. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Bake for 20 - 30 minutes being careful not to overbake. Let the brownies cool. To prepare the icing, melt together the 6 tbsp. cocoa and butter in a medium bowl. Set aside to cool. Add the powdered sugar, milk and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Stir well to combine. Spread over cooled brownies.

Question of the Day:

Do you like to hide veggies in food?

Try Something New Tuesday: Veggie Lasagna

So I recently got it in my head that I wanted to do a veggie lasagna for a Try Something New Tuesday post. I really don't know where the idea came from, but it definitely sounded good to me. I'm not a huge ground meat person, so mixing it up with veggies instead sounded like a win/win.

I looked at a number of recipes for veggie lasagna before ultimately deciding that I already had a pretty darn good recipe for regular lasagna so why couldn't I just add veggies to that and take out the meat?!? And that's exactly what I did. Here's the cast: 

I started with the veggies. I knew if I was going to really sell this to my kids, these babies were going to have to be small...as in practically microscopic. So I pulled out my Cuisinart food processor. 

I have used my food processor for purees and chopping veggies many times, but I had never used it for shredding anything. And being the nerd forward-thinking person that I am, I had watched the introductory video that came with the food processor when I got it a few years back. I distinctly remembered that you could definitely shred vegetables. After a few minutes and a quick review of the owner's manual that I had safely filed under "food processor" in my filing cabinet, I had it all figured out. Because I'm a complete geek awesome like that.

I started with zucchini. Look what the Cuisinart did!!! And it took about 2 milliseconds. No joke. Aren't they beautiful?!?

Next, I decided to shred a bell pepper. Because shredding is super fun. And I wanted more. I went with a red pepper because I figured it's pretty much the same color as the sauce so I could hide it easily. Oh, and the red ones are extra good for you. But it didn't shred as well as the zucchini.

It was really just finely chopped. So I decided to do the next bell pepper (an orange one...my color-matching logic again) with the standard chopping blade. I added about a quarter of a large red onion as well.

A few pulses and these little gems were cut down to kiddie-approved size.

Next I emptied 2 jars of pasta sauce into a large bowl.

Then I added the veggies to the pasta sauce.

Now I'm going to point out right here that you could absolutely chop up your veggies larger than these. However, if you choose to do that, I'm going to recommend roasting them a little or sauteing them in some olive oil before adding them to the lasagna. My vegetables were able to fully cook with the dish because they were so small, but larger veggies would probably need to be pre-cooked.

Back to my microscopic vegetables. My next step was to stir them into the sauce along with a little water. See - they're practically invisible!!!

Next up was the cheese mixture. First I cooked a package of frozen spinach according to the package directions. While it cooled, I mixed together my mozzarella, parmesan, cottage cheese and eggs.

Afterward, I put the spinach into a strainer and squeezed out all the liquid I could.

Then I placed the spinach on paper towels and blotted off more excess liquid.

Finally it was time to add the spinach to my cheese mixture.

At last it was time to assemble the lasagna! I started by spraying a foil pan really well with some Pam.

I then took about 3/4 cup of my sauce mixture and covered the bottom of the pan with it. This is the trick my mom taught me so you don't have to precook your lasagna noodles. You don't even have to buy the no-boil noodles. Any old lasagna noodle will do.

Next, I layered lasagna noodles across the pan. I would typically use 4 noodles for this, but this pan was extra large so I had to use part of a 5th noodle across the top.

Then I layered on about 1/3 of the cheese mixture,

and 1/3 of the remaining sauce mixture.

I repeated the noodle, cheese, sauce layers two more times. 

Then I cooked it at 400 degrees for about an hour and a half. I covered it with foil for the first hour and removed the foil for the last 30 minutes of cooking. Here's the finished product.

The verdict???

The kids ALL loved it. Jeff missed his meat, as I knew he would. I thought it was amazing! I much prefer it to the meaty variety. And for under 400 calories for one-twelfth of the pan, I was SOLD!!! 

Veggie Lasagna

• Any fresh veggies you want! I used 2 medium zucchinis, 2 bell peppers, & 1/4 of a large red onion.
• 1 package frozen spinach
• 2 jars spaghetti sauce
• 1 lg. container cottage cheese
• 1 lb. (4 cups) mozzarella cheese
• 3/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 2 eggs
• 12 lasagna noodles (any variety)
• 1/3 cup water

~Chop your fresh veggies to desired size. In a large bowl, combine spaghetti sauce, fresh veggies and water. Set aside. Cook spinach according to package directions. Drain spinach well and pat dry with paper towels. In another large bowl, combine mozzarella, parmesan and cottage cheeses with eggs. Stir in spinach. Spray pan well with nonstick spray. Spread 3/4 c. of sauce mixture in bottom of pan. Then layer: 4 noodles, 1/3 cheese mixture, and 1/3 of remaining sauce mixture. Repeat 2 more times. **There is NO need to precook your noodles.** Cover with foil. Bake at 400 degrees for 1-1/2 hours. Remove foil for last 30 minutes of baking. Remove from oven, and let sit 10 minutes.