My "From the Garden" series features recipes that make use of fresh produce straight out of the garden (or from farmer's markets, farm stands, pick-your-own, etc.) It's going to be a tasty summer! Click here to see the other recipes in the series.

As I have mentioned in a few recent posts, we have a LOT of zucchini growing in our garden. We were away last weekend and came back to 2 MONSTERS the size of my forearm. I grated them both up and ended up with TEN CUPS of zucchini. I used 4 cups for a double batch of these gooey, dark chocolatey brownies. And before you get weirded out by zucchini in brownies, you have to trust me when I say, it bakes up amidst all of the chocolatey goodness and you can't even tell!

I started with this recipe from Two Peas & their Pod, but I made quite a few tweaks to make them healthier:

Reduced the sugar by 1/2 cup
Swapped out half of the oil for apple sauce
Cut the chocolate chips in half
Used half flour and half oats

With the oats in there, and the cakey texture, you can kind of tell that these have been "healthed up," - but you can not taste the zucchini. It just makes the brownies really moist. JUST TRUST.

As for the other six cups of zucchini... I split it into two cup portions and froze it in zip lock bags for future baking!

Dark Chocolate Zucchini Oat Brownies

Servings: 20 - 24 brownies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup apple sauce
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 cup dark cocoa powder
2 cups grated zucchini
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9 x 13 pan with coconut oil, butter, or cooking spray.

TIP: For super easy clean up, line your pan with parchment paper.

Add all ingredients except for chocolate chips to your mixing bowl. Mix on low until everything is incorporated then bump up the speed and mix for 2 minutes. Add chocolate chips and mix in on low.

TIP: If your cocoa powder is clumpy (like mine was), sift it before adding to the bowl.