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Recipe updated 6/15/16
I don’t know if it’s right for a food blogger to have favorites or not, but there are just some recipes that I’m more excited about than others sometimes. I mean, all my recipes are good (in my opinion…really, did you expect me to say otherwise?), but there are some that are just a teensy bit extra special. This is one of those recipes.
My mom has made zucchini bars with cream cheese frosting for years. It’s just a great down-home favorite, and a great way to use up zucchini when it’s coming out of your ears. The bars are always so soft and moist and deliciously more-ish. You know what more-ish means. It’s when the zucchini bars aren’t quite evenly cut in the pan, so you have to even them out, and then you accidentally cut a little bit crooked, so then you have to even them out again…*repeat to infinity*
I used my new Baking Mix and some THM Gentle Sweet in these bars, and I was actually surprised at how close they came to the original naughty version. These are now one of my top fave desserts. Healthy or not. They’re best cold. Zucchini bars always are, in my opinion.  My Baking Mix gives these bars a great texture, and the Gentle Sweet does a great job of sweetening like good ol’ white sugar. Best part – it’s already powdered so you don’t have to grind it in your coffee grinder before mixing it into the cream cheese frosting!
You could probably use THM Baking Blend in these bars, but you’ll probably need a few extra tablespoons of it since my Baking Mix is a little drier than THM Baking Blend.
Need more recipes using my Baking Mix? Click here to see a list of all the recipes I’ve used it in so far. I’m always going back and trying old recipes with it and adding them to the list, so keep it bookmarked somewhere!
You can find this recipe in my cookbook, Necessary Food.
- 1½ cups Briana's Baking Mix*
- ¼ cup + 2 T THM Gentle Sweet**
- 1 T baking powder
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- ½ tsp. salt
- ¼ tsp. cloves
- 2 cups fresh grated zucchini***
- ¾ cup salted butter, softened
- 4 eggs
- ½ cup egg whites
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 8 oz. reduced fat cream cheese, softened (full fat would work as well)
- ½ cup Greek yogurt (or an additional 4 oz. of cream cheese, for a richer frosting)
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 T THM Gentle Sweet, or more, to taste**
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
- For the bars, whisk the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and mix well. Spray a glass 9x13 inch baking pan with cooking spray and spread the batter into it evenly. Batter will be thick. Bake at 350 degrees F for 23-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out cleanly. Let the bars cool completely before frosting.
- For the frosting, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the Greek yogurt, vanilla, and Gentle Sweet and beat until smooth. Add the whipping cream and beat for 30-40 seconds or until fluffy and thick.
- After frosting the bars, refrigerate until completely chilled, then cut and serve. Store in the refrigerator. These bars are best cold. Serves 15.
**I have also sweetened this recipe with ⅜ tsp. THM Pure Stevia Extract Powder in the cake and 6 doonks of THM Pure Stevia Extract Powder in the frosting. Some people may wish to add more, but those amounts were perfect for me.
***You can also use frozen zucchini in this recipe. We freeze grated zucchini in two cup portions and then use one bag, liquid and all, in this recipe. Zucchini breaks down and loses some of its water when its frozen, so be sure to use the liquid and all. Measure the zucchini before freezing, not after, as it loses some volume during freezing.
Click here for my Baking Mix recipe!
Suggested products:
THM Gentle Sweet and other great, high-quality products can be purchased from the Trim Healthy Mama online store.
This recipe delicious! I used a copycat baking blend for mix & used 1 3/4 C. , everything else the same. I didn’t have cream so left out of frosting….delicious without!!Linda
I’m glad they worked out for you with your tweaks, Linda!
I can not wait to make these. Looks yummy!!
Just from reading the backs of flours, the gluten free baking mixes that I have seen have not been low carb. Do you have a nutrition breakdown for these bars? Thanks!
Hi Berny! These bars use my homemade low-carb baking mix recipe, which you can find right here: https://www.briana-thomas.com/brianas-baking-mix/
I follow a healthy eating lifestyle called “Trim Healthy Mama”, which centers around eating healthy foods and separating carbs and fats into different meals to speed up the metabolism. Counting is not required on THM, so I embrace that and at this point don’t count nutrition facts in my recipes. You’re welcome to put the recipe into an app like MyFitnessPal to check and see whether it would fit into the particular lifestyle you’re following. 🙂
Which would you recommend as best (with and without icing), this recipe or your spice cake one, here https://www.briana-thomas.com/zucchini-spice-cake-with-browned-butter-frosting/ ? They look like very similar ingredients and I can’t make up my mind which to try 1st. I definitely like moister baked goods over the crumblier ones better.
Both of these are quite moist, but I would try the spice cake first. 🙂