Secret Recipe Club: Zucchini Cookies

It's yet another Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day. This is one of my favourite challenges as each month we are paired with a secret blog and we have to pick a recipe to make from that blog and reveal it on the same day. This month, I had the pleasure of looking through Secret Recipe Club's owner April's blog! She is a frugal wife and homeschooling mom who blogs at Angel's Homestead. As expected there are a lot of delicious, home style and frugal recipes on her blog.

April was born and raised in Southern Indiana where she now lives with her husband and children. She also spent many years in Chicago in her late teens and early 20's. Her passion is her family which shows through in her blog. She loves cooking and baking and documents her family’s efforts to live a simple, frugal and self-sufficient life.

I had a great time browsing through her recipes and shortlisting what I wanted to make. When I saw the zucchini (courgette) cookies, I knew I had to make them. I love baking with vegetables and have previously used zucchinis in a cake so I was curious to find out if it would work in a cookie form. Plus cookies are my favourite treat - yes more than cake! 

These cookies were absolutely delicious! I made a lot of cookies and they disappeared really quickly. You can actually see the zucchini in some of the cookies! It was a thin crispy cookie with a lovely spice and crunch of nuts. The chocolate helped to balance the flavours and the wholemeal made it feel healthy and virtuous. I used wholemeal flour instead of plain flour as I had some to hand and I thought it would work well with the flavours here. 

Other recipes that caught my eye were apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies, creamy lemon crumb squares, maple syrup pancake muffins and the BEST chocolate cake EVER (the title says it all for that one!)

 

 adding the grated zucchini

 adding pecan nuts and chocolate chips 

 WARNING - these cookies spread a lot so space them out properly 

 otherwise you get something like this 

 Thin crispy cookie! 

Recipe from Angel's Homestead

The only changes I made was to use wholemeal flour and to reduce the sugar amount. There may be a slight variation with the conversion 

225g butter

250g caster sugar

100g brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

375g wholemeal flour

1.5 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1.5 teaspoon baking powder

1.5 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup peeled, grated zucchini - I used 1 medium sized zucchini as shown

1 cup chocolate chips - I used 200g which is just over 1 cup

1/2 cup chopped pecans - I used 90g which was just over 1/2 cup

• Preheat oven to 175C.
• Cream the butter and sugars. 
• Add eggs, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon, 
• Stir in grated zucchini.
• Add pecan nuts and chocolate chips. 
• Place 6 - 8 scoops of cookie dough on each tray (depending on size of your tray) as the cookies spread a LOT whilst baking. 
• Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown on the edges and lightly browned on top. 
• Allow to cool on the tray for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.