Low Carb Zucchini Brownies

I had a video call with the caregivers' support group — Sandra's group, which has moved to Zoom like everything else, and which is somehow both less and more intimate on screen than it was in the church basement: less because you can't share a cup of bad coffee, more because you can see into each other's kitchens and bedrooms and the backgrounds of their lives, the shelves and the photos and the evidence of the daily domestic machinery that holds a caregiver upright. Sandra's kitchen has yellow curtains. I don't know why this matters to me, but it does. The yellow curtains are cheerful and specific and they belong to a woman who is carrying the same weight I am, and the cheerfulness of her curtains is an act of defiance that I respect enormously.

Marvin had a bad episode on Wednesday — agitated, angry, pushing at the table, calling for his mother. His mother died in 1994. When he calls for his mother, I don't correct him. I say, "She's not here right now, Marv. But I'm here." And sometimes that's enough and sometimes it isn't, and Wednesday it wasn't enough, and the agitation lasted two hours and I sat with him and spoke softly and played Ella Fitzgerald and waited for the storm to pass, and the storm passed at ten-fifteen, and he looked at me as if seeing me for the first time that evening and said, "Ruth?" and I said, "Yes, I'm here," and he said, "I'm tired," and I took him to bed and he slept and I did not sleep and I sat at the kitchen table and wrote in my journal until my hand ached.

I made a simple baked zucchini — the first from my garden, sliced thick, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with Parmesan and breadcrumbs and herbs, baked until golden. Nothing elaborate. The zucchini from my garden, in my oven, on my table. The small victory of a vegetable I grew myself. The day was hard. The zucchini was easy. The ratio is not balanced. But the zucchini is on the plate, and the plate is on the table, and I am at the table, and Marvin is sleeping, and the house is quiet, and the quiet is not peace but it is not war, and I will take it.

The zucchini I described in that last paragraph — the first one from my garden this season — wasn’t the only one waiting for me. There’s always more zucchini than you expect, and after a week like this one, I wanted to do something with it that felt like a small indulgence rather than just sustenance. These low carb zucchini brownies are what I turned to: still the zucchini I grew, still my kitchen, still something manageable — but this time with chocolate, which is its own kind of mercy.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 16

Ingredients

2 cups shredded zucchini (about 1 medium zucchini), excess moisture squeezed out
1/2 cup almond butter or peanut butter
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup low carb sweetener (such as erythritol or monk fruit blend)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar-free chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8x8-inch baking pan or line with parchment paper.
Prep the zucchini. Shred zucchini using a box grater, then wrap in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze firmly to remove as much moisture as possible. Set aside.
Mix the base. In a large bowl, stir together the almond butter, sweetener, eggs, and vanilla extract until smooth and well combined.
Add dry ingredients. Stir in cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt until a thick batter forms.
Fold in zucchini. Add the shredded zucchini to the batter and fold gently until evenly distributed. The batter will loosen slightly.
Add chocolate chips. Fold in most of the chocolate chips, then pour batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Scatter remaining chips over the surface.
Bake. Bake for 28–32 minutes, until the center is just set and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with only a few moist crumbs.
Cool before cutting. Allow brownies to cool completely in the pan before slicing into 16 squares. They firm up as they cool.

Nutrition (per serving)

Low Carb Zucchini Brownies — When the Garden Gives You Something Easy