Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes with Chambord Ganache

Summertime means sun, heat and ... zucchini. Anyone who has a garden knows that it seems like you pick all the zucchini in the garden one evening and the next evening there's twenty more. My parent's refrigerator is full of zucchini, some the size of a baseball bat.

I didn't want to make your typical spiced zucchini bread, though I do love it. I wanted to disguise my zucchini a little bit more because after all, zucchini is a vegetable and as far as I'm concerned, veggies have no place in my desserts (this goes for fruit as well, though I do make some exceptions).

Raspberry Chambord Cheesecake Brownie Bites

I have a confession. On Saturday, I had my first blog post fail. I came up with the idea of these brownies. Dark chocolate brownies, with a raspberry chambord reduction and a cream cheese swirl. Except, I didn't want to bake them in a pan and cut them and inevitably end up with brownie crumbles, chunks and a mess. No, I wanted perfectly portioned individual brownie bites. Enter my "non-stick" mini muffin pan and a can of cooking spray.

The term non-stick clearly does not apply to brownies. Maybe there's some scientific reasoning for this? Too moist and dense perhaps? And, as I found out, not even the combination of a non-stick pan AND cooking spray will keep brownies from sticking to a mini muffin pan. So my plan to have perfectly portioned, beautiful mini brownie bites was ruined. Instead, I had mini brownies that could only be pried from the pan with a fork. Of course, this didn't stop me from eating the entire pan in one evening.