There's A Cucumber In My Brownie!

With all the juicing I have been doing, the question of what to do with all the leftover pulp has been weighing on my mind. Currently, most of the pulp is going into my compost pile. That's great, but I still felt that I could use the pulp for something we could eat.
If you have ever seen the book Deceptively Delicious then you are familiar with the idea of using vegetable puree in baked goods.















I tried several of the recipes from the book and my kids could always detect that something was "weird". However, that was several years ago so I decided it was time to give it another try, this time using the pulp from my juicing.
First, I made my juice for the day. This one has Cucumber, radish, cabbage, carrot, apple, beet, lemon and spinach (YUM!).
This is what was left.

Hmm, doesn't look so good, does it?

I tossed it in the vitamix blender with some water. The amount of water will vary depending on how wet the pulp is, but you are aiming for an applesauce texture.

This is after the trip through the blender.

Simply use this puree in place of the butter called for in any brownie recipe. Or you could try replacing 1/2 the butter at first. I went for full replacement.

This was the result

What did my kids think? Well, my daughter doesn't like brownies at all so she didn't want anything to do with them. My son? The little turkey could spot it a mile away, he wanted to know "what weird ingredient did you try?) !!
I thought they were really good. The only thing I would change is that I lowered the amount of sugar in the recipe and next time I would use the full amount. I compensated this time with the powdered sugar on top.
I will WARN you though. DO NOT attempt to eat these warm, they are hideous. I am not kidding here. I thought the whole batch was heading for the trash. After they cooled, the chocolate flavor came through and they were great.

Enjoy!