http://www.care2.com/greenliving/green-dish-zucchini-chocolate-chip-cookies.html
Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies
By Melissa Breyer, Senior Editor, Care2 Healthy and Green Living
Yes that’s right, zucchini and chocolate. In some kind of stupendous feat of baking alchemy, the taste and texture of the squash completely disappears, while adding moisture and a nice nutritional pop. Although those of you with over-enthusiastic zucchini vines know all too well that you can, and are generally required to, sneak zucchini into just about anything (including unlocked cars and neighbor’s mailboxes)–chocolate chip cookies came as a surprise to me.
However I had made a dark chocolate and zucchini cake which was a big hit here at Care2 last summer, and really delicious. Not long after I tried that recipe someone asked me what would be my dream book to write, and I answered that it had actually already been written and I had just read it: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s just the best book, and I wish I had written it! (Not only for the year of farming and cooking that she got to experience, but for her wonderful writing.) Anyway, it’s the book that yielded this lovely recipe.
I usually adapt recipes with a strong tweak and swap out refined ingredients for more wholesome ones, but Barbara’s recipe is pretty much spot on to my eye and I only made a few alternative suggestions. I am going to play around with a vegan version using maple syrup for honey, flaxseed meal for the egg and coconut oil for the butter. I’ll let you know how it turns out next week. Until then, happy zucchini hiding.
Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar (or Sucanat)
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Combine in large bowl:
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Combine in a separate, small bowl and blend into liquid mixture:
1 cup finely shredded zucchini
12 oz chocolate chips
Stir these into other ingredients, mix well. Drop by spoonful onto greased baking
sheet, and flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake at 350F degrees, 10 to 15 minutes.
Makes 2 dozen cookies.
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38 comments
add your comment »Excellent use for all those huge zucchinis from my mom's garden, thx!
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Amberre - tapioca, potato, and rice flour are all refined starches. I realize you need some of this for a light texture, but I'd really like at least half, if not more, of my flour blend to have fiber and protein. I have my own grain grinder and can make brown rice flour as fine as any white rice flour, and that helps a little. Before I went gluten-free I ground my own wheat from wheat berries, and it was so light and fine I used it straight for white flour and nobody knew. But I'm still looking for a good, high protein/fiber GF flour blend that works well.
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I certainly do appreciate any attempt to put a little extra nutritional value into any "treat" foods, however I can understand Victoria's vexation. I always start by replacing all of the refined white flour with a white whole wheat variety. That means that the base of the "goodies" will be secretly healthy (you can't see the difference). Next, I replace sugar with other sweeteners that wont skyrocket the blood glucose (I prefer stevia for alot of things right now), and leave in a couple of teaspoons of sugar at the most if needed (usually a darker, more flavourful sugar). Finally, I replace all butter with a healthy oil or sauce (you may be able to sneak extra zucchini in here, or banana), leaving in only a teaspoon or two of butter if removing all of it ruins the texture/flavour too much (that tiny amount is often enough). A little tinkering goes a long way; my baked goods get eaten by a diverse group of people, many of whom prefer white bread and sugar in their daily lives, and they've always asked for more!
Miss Info:
I have baked a few gluten-free cookies and tarts, and have found that a combination of tapioca starch, potatoe starch, and rice flour works quite well (I can't recall the exact proportions, but this mixture is well known and can be found by googling about gluten-free baking). Since the gluten normally present in other baked goods acts as a binder, I often have had to add some extra egg to the recipes in order to keep the baked goods from being too crumbly
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One cup of zucchini means each cookie has only 2 tsp of raw shredded zucchini. Cooked, the zucchini in each cookie would be less than a teaspoon. Sweeteners and chocolate, on the other hand, are a generous 3.6 teaspoons per cookie.
I loathe "healthy" recipes that put infinitesimal amounts of something healthy into junk food. It is fine to enjoy some junk, but thinking these cookies are healthy may cause to people to overeat the junk food.
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Anyone know a way to make this gluten-free?
Trish: I would try using Spectrum instead of butter, and either sorghum or agave nectar (or a mix of both, for a middle ground flavor) instead of honey.
Re: the honey debate. There was an article on here recently that said that heating honey was bad. I haven't seen this anywhere else, and I've done a lot of reading about honey, and a lot of cooking with it. Be your own judge on the matter, or use a different sweetener just to be sure.
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The trick to making a soft and chewy cookie is to replace 1 tbsp. of the sugar with 1 tbsp. of corn syrup (light or golden) and reduce the cooking time a little. It is amazing and works!
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I've baked, using both honey and maple syrup and through a lot of trial and error, found that maple syrup tends to caramalize faster than honey. I ended up turning my oven down by 25f and sticking to the same length of baking time. It was a slightly different cookie recipe, but after many attempts with maple syrup turning out hard cookies, the lower temperatures worked out to make a nice, soft cookie! Now, to get out there and collect the last of my zucchini!
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I can't wait to try these. Last week I made banana chocolate chip cookies with dark chocolate chips and they were a total hit (my husband found bananas on clearance at the store and we had just finished banana bread and banana muffins from the last clearance sale). Hopefully soon they will have zucchini on sale soon - adding ingredients like bananas or zucchini make the cookies really moist and yummy! Thanks!
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Very, very good. I like mini dark chocolate chips.
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Yummmmm...my next neighbor will love these and am in the mood to bake...
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