Chocolate Zucchini Bars | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with chocolate zucchini bars. That's right. These are made with a surprisingly large amount of zucchini, but without any flour or any white sugar. And I'm trying to present these as breakfast bars, which is a little tough since they have the texture and taste of a special occasion decadent dessert. But anyway, we'll figure out what these are later. But for now, we'll start with how to prep the pan, which is by generously greasing it with oil. And then by placing in a piece of parchment paper that goes across the bottom and up two sides like this. And that's going to make it a lot easier to get this out of the pan once it's cooled. And once that's set, we can move on to the star of the show, some nice, fresh, hopefully pretty small zucchini. Okay, young zucchini is going to be more tender and less bitter and won't have any seeds inside. And what we need for this recipe is two pack cups, which is probably going to be about three small zucchini, but your results may vary. And what we'll do once that's grated is transfer those onto some paper towels and then gather those up and give it a good squeeze in an attempt to remove as much excess liquid as we can. Oh, and you know what? Forget I just said paper towels. You should actually do this in a dry kitchen towel since we really do want to apply a lot of pressure here, which is way easier with a cloth towel as paper towels tend to rip open and explode, especially if you're not using the thick expensive ones. But anyway, the point is squeeze out as much moisture as you can. And once that's set, we'll pop that in the fridge and we'll move on to the rest of the batter. And that's going to start with 3/4 cup of pistachio butter or any nut butter you want. Okay, almond butter is easier to find and probably cheaper. And will do the job as will pretty much any nut butter. And then we'll also want to add some melted butter as well as a couple large eggs. And then, as I mentioned earlier, we're not going to use any white sugar in this, but we do need to sweeten it up a little bit, which we'll do with some maple syrup. And once we have that transferred in, we'll take a whisk and give this a mix. And please, you're going to want to start stirring very slowly here. Right? Whenever we have something really thick like a nut butter and we try to stir it with other fluid ingredients in the bowl. If you start too fast, it's going to splash all over. So maybe don't do that and start off slow. And then once it comes together, we can get more aggressive. And once we have that mixed, we will stop and we will add our salt as well as a little splash of vanilla plus a spoon of baking powder. No, not baking soda. Baking powder. And what we'll do is stir that for about 30 seconds before we stop and add the final ingredients, which for me are going to be some chopped walnuts, plus a nice big cup of dark chocolate chips. And for me, the darker and more bittersweet the chocolate, the better. And that's it. We'll finish up with some almond flour, as well as our hopefully very wellsqueezed dry zucchini. And then what we'll do is switch to a spatula and give this a thorough mix. And unlike batters that have flour in them, nothing's going to happen here if you overm mix. Except you'll be wasting time, which as you well know is by far the most valuable ingredient. So once we do have that thoroughly mixed, we will stop and we will transfer that into our prep pan. And while I do that, let me explain two things you can do to improve this. Okay, I never think of it until after the fact, but we should just mix in half the chocolate chips and sprinkle the other half on the top. so that they don't all sink to the bottom, which is what tends to happen with these kind of batters. And then to make things worse, I decided to give this the old tapa tapa to settle the batter down, which is normally fine and recommended, but that is also going to move those chips closer to the bottom. So, to recap, sprinkle half the chips over the top and do not under any circumstances tap this. But in any event, we will transfer that into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 35 to 40 minutes or until it looks like this. And yes, that does appear to be perfectly baked. But we still need to check. And if it's really done properly, a toothpick inserted near the center will come out clean. And then what we'll do is just let this sit in the pan until it cools down to room temp. At which point I think we should transfer that into the fridge until it's ice cold before we try to cut it. Okay. The colder this is, the firmer it is and the easier it's going to be to work with. So, that's exactly what I did. And once cold, we'll pull it out and carefully remove that from the pan, which thanks to that parchment paper is going to be very simple and easy. And then, as far as portioning goes, I'm going to cut this into eight big bars. Since, again, I'm trying to convince you this would be a beautiful breakfast. next to a nice big cup of coffee or tea. But having said that, you could certainly cut this into 12 pieces, which would still be a nice portion. They just would not be bars. And if we're going to call them chocolate zucchini bars, that is kind of important. And then once these are cut, we could just plate them up and serve. And I think they would look just fine. But I decided to go for a very experimental garnish involving some candied zucchini. So, what I did after slicing some of that on the mandolin is I combined equal parts of water and sugar in a pan set over mediumigh heat. And once the sugar dissolved and it started simmering, I transferred the zucchini in. And what we'll do is cook that, stirring occasionally, for about a minute or two, just until that zucchini loses its raw edge and starts to soften up and become flexible. And once that happens, what we'll do is pull that off the heat and we'll transfer that zucchini into a bowl and then cover it with a little bit of that hot simple syrup and we'll let that cool all the way down. At which point it's ready to garnish the top of our bars. And while this step of course is completely optional, I really did love how this looked and I thought it made the overall appearance more provocative and more enticing. And was I upset that it ended up looking like I garnished this with pickles? A little bit. But we should never regret trying something new since if we're not trying new things, what are we going to try? But anyway, you decide. I mean, you guys are after all the angular miracles of your candied zucchini circles. But whether you use those or not, this, my friends, is one extremely delicious and I think very beautiful bar. Right. All right. I thought the taste was fantastic and they were just sweet enough. And no, it doesn't taste like zucchini. And if you've ever had a zucchini muffin or zucchini bread, you know what I'm talking about. Okay, used like this are much more of a fruit than a vegetable. And as far as the texture goes, these are extremely moist and very tender. And I'd say sort of similar to a nice fudgy brownie. And while maybe not ideal visually, having most of those chocolate chips sink down to the bottom actually turned out not to be that big of a deal. Although I would still go with my recommendations from earlier and sprinkle half the chips over the top. And also don't forget no tapping. But anyway, that's it. My take on chocolate zucchini bars. Whether you end up serving these for breakfast or use them as a slightly healthier dessert option, I really did love everything about these and I really do hope you give them a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy.