Tis the season for zucchini to grow into the size of baseball bats (and be used as such if you live at my house). Tis the season for everyone to lock their doors while at church…just to prevent someone from unloading their overgrown zucchini into other people’s cars when no one’s looking. Tis the season for people to start offering to pay you money just to take zucchini off their hands.
It’s amazing how one little hill can produce enough zucchini to fill an entire kitchen. (Did I mention that I didn’t even plant zucchini this year?!)
We’ve eaten a bunch of zucchini in stir fry or simply sauted it in a bit of olive oil. It’s SO good like that. I’ve already shredded a bunch and put it into the freezer. Now, I’m on a quest to figure out some great recipes that will sneak zucchini into a variety of dishes, making them more nutritious. And well…a zucchini can only serve as a baseball bat for so long. Eventually it must be eaten.
I don’t like eating a huge zucchini as is. The seeds are larger than my teeth and the skin is tougher than I prefer. I like shredding the large ones in my food processor and stirring them into zucchini bread (whole wheat and honey recipe coming soon).
While making zucchini bread last week (and then looking around at all the other huge zucchini in my kitchen) I realized that surely one could come up with a cookie, or at least a cookie bar that included zucchini. So I tinkered around. I discovered this: Cookies are a delicious way to eat more zucchini.
Here’s the recipe I came up with:
Giant Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup organic sucanat (dehydrated cane sugar juice)
1 egg
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup chocolate chips
Shred zucchini (I use a food processor). In a large mixing bowl mix sucanat, flour, salt and baking soda. Stir in shredded zucchini, melted butter and egg. Fold in chocolate chips. Use a large scoop to put 1 1/2 T. sized balls of dough onto a cookie sheet. Bake in a 350° oven for 15 minutes. Makes about 20 giant cookies.
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bars
Follow the same recipe as above, only spread the dough into a 9×13 inch pan. Bake in a 350° oven for 20-25 minutes.
My husband, kids and I all loved these. Zucchini makes them moist…and of course chocolate makes everything good.
Coming up in my next Zucchini Recipes post…I’ll share my whole wheat and honey zucchini bread and muffin recipe!
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Go check out Amy’s awesome list of zucchini recipes!
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We love zucchini cookies! My recipe is from the book Simply In Season. ;)
those zucchini bars look amazing! I’ve never tried zucchini cookies — but they’re going on my list too. yum.
Thanks for the great recipes….I have a somewhat dumb question….when you shred your zucchini, do you take the peel off and the seeds out? thanks so much!
We put zucchini in anything made with spaghetti sauce. Shredded zucchini in sauce over pasta or meatballs, sliced layered in lasagna. We also like it sliced, breaded in italian bread crumbs with a little parmesan stirred in, fried in olive oil and dipped in marinara.
Yum, thanks for sharing. Our zucchini peaks in about a month (we hope), so I’ll try some of these recipes soon. I make a zucchini-oat-raisin muffin recipe every year that we enjoy. It will be fun to try new recipes!
This recipe looks so great. I was wondering if I can use sugar in place of the sucanat. Thanks for the great recipe!
Sure, you can substitute sugar for the sucanat no problem…one for one. :)
I made a double batch of the zucchini c. c. bars and they were wonderful. Thanks so much for posting your recipes. We ate one 9 x 13 pan and I froze the other pan of bars.
Well, it may not be high on the most-nutritious list, but I make chocolate zucchini mini-breads that are quite yummy! Recipe here: http://savingandgiving.blogspot.com/2008/09/chocolate-zucchini-bread.html
Here is a zucchini breakfast casserole that sounds good:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/zucchini_breakfast_casserole/
Enjoy!
Can you use honey instead of Sucanat??
I’m liking all these zucchini recipes…we have planted a garden and hope to be harvesting many zucchini’s in the future! Love the healthy recipes, sucanet is a must in my pantry.
Thanks so much for these! They are wonderful! I made a couple of additions, some coconut oil, etc…and think I will even try adding some cinnamon next time! They will definitely make it to my “loved” recipes collection! :D
These look yummy – I saw a similar recipe a few days ago and the “chef” said that if you wanted to hide the fact that you added zuchinni you could just peel it first.
I made these today and the batter was awfully dry. I had to add abt 1 c of applesauce and some coconut oil to get the batter to stick together. Has that happened to you? by the way they came out delish!!
Super yummy! My family including a very picky 3yr old devoured them. A cookie I actually feel good about offering him. Thanks for a great cookie and a use for the ridiculously large zucchini I grew.
i made these tonight! i did not have luck, first i fallowed directions and it was just was not wet at all, was very floury, so i added another half cup of butter and another egg, for a total of 2 eggs and one cup of sugar. so i sprinkled alittle more soda bc i was afraid it would be enough. finally looked like cookie dough consistency. they baked nice looked pretty, they had a nice texture they were bitter! the choc chips were semi sweet chips, and the zucchini was from farmers market the only thing i did different was i didnt use a food processor so i used my cheese grater. i used whole wheat flour but it was store baught not ground myself. all components tasted fine seperate. im thinking it was adding the extra soda? i would appreciate any thaughts on this.
I would bet the extra baking soda did it. That stuff does have a strong
taste if you use too much. :)
Thank you! What a yummy recipe! My 4-year-old loves about every veggie besides zucchini, so I am thrilled to have a new way to “bury” zucchini in a healthy cookie! These turned out great and we love them! (This was my first experiment using sucanat, which I heard about from your site.) Love your site! Blessings, Harriet G.
Laura, is there something missing from this recipe??? We began making this recipe – doubled! only to discover that the wet ingredients are quite lacking for the dry ingredients to become properly moistened. It was a very, very dry mixture when following the recipe as outlined above. We then perused the comments and added some applesauce to moisten it as another commenter had done. I just wanted to double check to see if the recipe is indeed complete or an ingredient was omitted when it was written. We usually have such wonderful results with your fantastic recipes! :)
Well shucks, I’m not sure what happened. It could be that my zucchini is “wetter” than normal? Maybe try less flour next time to see if that helps. :)
The same thing happened to me, the batter is very dry. After reading the other posts, I’m going to add some applesauce.
My batter was dry, too, but I didn’t read the comments about applesauce until after I put it in the oven. :-P I just kept mixing (gently), and it all moistened up nicely. Maybe the zucchini releases some moisture after a few minutes and helps it all stick together. Haven’t tasted them yet, but they smell delicious!
It could be a difference between freshly – milled flour and store – bought perhaps?