MRS. YODER'S CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI BROWNIES

This is another recipe I found at Kevin's Amish 365.com. He features Mrs. Yoder and her recipes often. While he didn't have a picture of her brownies, he did show a picture of her handwritten recipe card. 

I love saving recipe cards that my mother wrote. Makes we feel a little closer to her when I see them. Since I started this blog, I have quit writing recipes on cards. Hopefully my granddaughters will feel close to me when they "read" them on my blog. Times change.

I will give you Mrs. Yoder's recipe and show my changes in parenthesis. For a number of years, I have had difficulty making desserts mainly the way they were written with lots of sugar. I have read several times that most recipes can have the sugar amounts reduced without ruining the taste of the dessert. To help out I often times use either stevia or a purchased blend of sugar and stevia. BUT I have just passed by many recipes because I couldn't use 2 cups of sugar in them. I want to live as long as I can and repeatedly we hear on television and read that the large amount of sugar that people are taking in daily, is hurting their health.

My husband and I liked my version. (Personally the icing could have been a little sweeter and if I had not used special dark chocolate chips but semi-sweet, it would have been even with my reduced sugar. My husband loved them just like I made them.) You would never know the brownies have zucchini in them....they are so good.

MRS. YODER'S CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI BROWNIES

2        cups flour
1         teaspoon salt
1/2     cup cocoa
2        teaspoons vanilla
1-1/2  cups sugar (I used 3/4 cup blend - sugar and stevia)
2        cups grated zucchini
1-1/2  teaspoons baking soda
1/2     cup oil
1/2     cup chopped walnuts, (optional)

Topping:
3/4     cup sugar (I used 1/3 cup sugar/stevia blend which meant I reduced the sugar to 2/3 cup)
3        tablespoons milk
3        tablespoons butter
1/2     cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (I used a glass baking dish so reduced the oven temperature to 325 degrees F.)

Grease a 9 x 13 - inch cake pan. (When I saw the amount of "batter" I had, I decided to use my 8 x 11 - inch dish. Personally I think the brownies would have been too thin had I used the larger pan. I also used my homemade Pan Grease.)

Mix the ingredients for the brownies until well-blended (may be thick) Mrs. Yoder wasn't kidding. I started using a wooden spoon and ended up using my hand to mix the ingredients together. In all this, I forgot to add the nuts. I just sprinkled them all over the top and then pressed them down into the thick batter with my hands.)

Pour into pan. (Sorry Mrs. Yoder, there was no way I could pour my batter....you said it might be thick. It pressed nicely into the pan though.)

Then I added the nuts since I had forgotten them earlier.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. (Even in my smaller pan and with the lower temperature, the brownies were done in 30 minutes.)

About half way through baking, start the topping:

In a saucepan, add the sugar, milk, and butter (topping) to boil over medium low heat. Boil 30 seconds.

Add the chips and remove the pan from the heat. Stir the chips until they melt and

the mixture is smooth.

Pour the topping over the brownies as soon as they come out of the oven.

Cool on wire rack.

Best if you wait to cut when the topping has time to "set up".








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