Vegan Zucchini Brownies Gluten Free

This chocolate zucchini brownie recipe is gluten-free, refined sugar-free with a paleo option! You won’t ever need to look for a vegan brownie mix anymore! I love making recipes with zucchini. It’s a healthy vegetable full of vitamins and nutrients that brings a great texture to baking recipes without any notable aftertaste. I have made for example Vegan Chocolate Zucchini Bread, Vegan Zucchini Muffins, Healthy Zucchini Carrot Bread, or Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies.

What Are Zucchini Brownies?

A Zucchini Brownie recipe is a super moist, fudgy brownie that uses grated zucchini as a trick to add moisture and fudginess to your brownie. It’s somehow a healthy twist to regular vegan brownies as this adds a boost to your 5-a-day veggie target while enjoying a treat! All the ingredients in this vegan zucchini brownie recipe are gluten-free.

Ingredients and Substitutions

Let’s see what you need to make these fudgy brownies.

Grated Zucchini – Grate and drain the zucchini. Baking with grated zucchini requires discarding all the zucchini water, or your brownies will be too wet. Read the paragraph below about how to drain water from grated zucchini perfectly. Maple Syrup – Use maple syrup or any unrefined liquid sweetener like coconut nectar, agave syrup, or brown rice syrup. Sugar-free maple-flavored syrup also works for this recipe. Coconut Sugar or unrefined cane sugar. You can use any crystal sugar or sweetener you like. So if you want a sugar-free alternative, use erythritol or allulose. Almond Flour – Use ultra-fine almond flour for best results. Almond meal is coarse, and it won’t absorb the moisture as well in the recipe. Also, if you like, you can use gluten-free oat flour can be used as a replacement for almond flour, but the brownies will be slightly drier. Peanut Butter – Use a fresh, runny jar of peanut butter with no added sugar and oil on top. Using an old jar of peanut butter where the nut butter has dried out will result in a dry, less fudgy brownie. You can also use fresh runny almond butter or tahini for a paleo-vegan brownie recipe. Cocoa Powder – I prefer using unsweetened cocoa powder. Coconut Oil – you can use refined or unrefined coconut oil. Flax Egg – A flax egg is a natural vegan egg made of water and a flaxseed meal. It allows the brownie batter to hold well without using eggs from animal sources. It’s quite easy to make a flax egg. Bring one tablespoon of flaxseed meal, brown or golden, into a bowl and whisk with 3 tablespoons of hot water. Set aside for 15 minutes until it forms a gooey egg-like texture. Use it as an egg in your zucchini brownie recipe. Vanilla Extract – to add flavors. Salt – to enhance the flavors of the chocolate. Baking Soda – or use double the baking powder if preferred. This makes the texture a tad airier.

How To Make Vegan Zucchini Brownies

It’s an easy vegan zucchini brownie recipe made in 1 bowl. However, there’s one important trick to make the best zucchini brownie recipe. The water content in zucchini is so high that if you don’t drain your grated zucchini of their liquid, the brownies won’t hold. It sounds easy, but it can be challenging to squeeze out all the zucchini water by hand.

Tips for Perfect Brownies

Fresh Peanut Butter – Whether you choose to use peanut butter, almond butter, or sunflower seed butter in this recipe, the key to success is to use a fresh jar. In fact, old peanut butter gets dry and hard. As a result, it creates dry and crumbly brownies. That is why I recommend using a freshly opened jar with that little layer of oil on top. Stir the jar to combine the oil with the peanut butter and then measure. Also, make sure you are using peanut butter with no added sugar and no added oil. These two potential additives in peanut butter also impact the taste and texture of your zucchini brownies. Baking Time – The brownie’s baking time depends significantly on the baking dish’s size. The 30 minutes recommended in this recipe is for a 9-inch x 6-inch brownie pan. If you are using a larger pan, your brownie will be thinner and bake faster. If the pan is smaller, your brownie will be thicker and require more baking to set. Cool Brownies – My trick is to pop the lukewarm brownie in the fridge for 10 minutes to give it an extra fudgy texture. If you love super fudgy brownies, then try this! You will be impressed by the result!

Step-by-Step Video

Why You’ll Love Healthy Zucchini Brownies

You are probably wondering how zucchini brownies can be healthy. Compared to a regular brownie recipe, this vegan zucchini brownie recipe is definitely a healthy twist to your favorite dessert. It’s a great way to enjoy a chocolate brownie without guilt. Below are a few reasons why this zucchini brownie recipe is a healthier alternative to your regular brownie recipe or to your brownie mix.

Refined sugar-free – this recipe uses the best sugars; coconut sugar has a lower GI than white sugar, and maple syrup contains many nutrients like potassium that you won’t have in a regular brownie recipe. Gluten-free Boosts your vegetable intake Plant-based fat – the recipe works with almond butter and healthy oils like sunflower seed oil if you want to decrease the saturated fat of this vegan zucchini brownie recipe.