The Quest to Find the Perfect Vegan Brownie- Part 2

Continuing my quest, I found a recipe on allrecipes.com that used, of all things, zucchini. I was skeptical about it, but at this point I'll try anything to find fudgy, rich vegan brownies. Besides, I had some shredded zucchini in the freezer left over from zucchini bread. After mixing all the other ingredients, I realized I only had about half the zucchini that I needed. So I divided the batter in half, added zucchini to half the mix, and apple purée to the other, ending up with two types of brownies.

While they're not exactly what I'm looking for, they're pretty darn close. They were moist and chocolatey, but not as fudgy as I would have liked. Still, they're the closest I've come to an ultimate vegan brownie so far. Both the apple and the zucchini batches were good, but I preferred the zucchini a tiny bit more.

Vegan Zucchini Brownies

• 1/4 cup oil
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup shredded zucchini

The batter will look pretty dry before you
add the zucchini, as you can see in the
bowl on the left.

1. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Mix the oil, sugar and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt, and mix until combined.
4. Fold in the zucchini
5. Pour batter into a greased pan. Since this recipe only makes a small amount of batter, I used a glass 8 x 6 Pyrex dish.
6. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean.