A few months ago, in late spring, I went to the flea market with my dad - a classic Murray thing he loves that I also quite enjoy! I bought two random little zucchini plants to plant in our backyard, which I did. Fast forward a few months, and we had a bunch of HUGE zucchinis ready to go! Some of them I picked and used for stir frys and other dinners, but a few remained that were way too huge. I decided to do some baking with them! Is this nesting?!
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This is one of the larger zucchinis: note my hand for reference! (also - I am not sure why it is yellow. All other zukes I picked from these plants were green! Go figure.) |
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We figured the zucchini was a close reference to newborn size so we gave it a swaddle and tested out our stroller ;) |
Here is what I baked with my zucchinis:
1. My moms classic cocoa zucchini cake. Am I allowed to share the recipe mom or is it top secret?! It is so yummy! There is also a recipe for cream cheese icing to go on top, which is delicious as well, but I enjoy them just like this too. Oh and they are upside down as they were still warm when I took them out of the muffin tin and I find when they go right side up on the cooling sheets, they get big lines in the bottom. (I should probably just leave them to cool in the muffin tin... but I only have one and needed to continue on with the other batches!)
2.
Zucchini breakfast cookies
I just started googling healthy recipes to bake that include zucchini. These are quite healthy as they have nuts, wheat flour, oats, and minimal sugar. I also added some protein powder and coconut to them! They are not super sweet, but I think they will make good relatively healthy snacks when I am up at all hours feeding the baby :)
3.
Chocolate chip zucchini bars
These ones don't have a lot of sugar in them. Plus, I needed recipes that didn't include eggs or butter as I had run out! I subbed almond butter for peanut butter as that's what I had handy. I liked the idea of making one big sheet pan and then cutting them into squares. You can see I tried a little bit out of the corner and the taste is great! However, they are really moist and so far don't hold up as a square. I am not sure what to do at this point so I am leaving them to cool even more than recommended and hoping that helps! I hope I can at least get them into a square shape to freeze and then eat them semi-frozen when needed.
I really appreciate the internet for ideas & recipes like this - there is so much variety out there! However, I must admit that I get a bit annoyed when I have to scroll through 34 photos of the baking process and tons of text before I get to the actual recipe. I guess this is the world we live in - blogs & online writing are where things are at these days! (as I type on my blog, ha!)
I am not off to figure out how to store all of this in the house - hoping the freezer has lots of space at the moment! Happy weekend :)