#14 Zucchini oat cookies

brown butter and fiber

I can imagine you, on a beautiful September day, going to your favorite cafe, pausing mid-order to peruse to snack display filled with croissants, cookies, and sandwiches, and making deep, intense eye contact with this brown butter zucchini oat cookie. Half a second passes, and you turn away to say “just a black drip please” because the economy sucks, and you don’t feel like you deserve a treat.

I don’t think anyone needs to do anything special, be productive, or do a little monkey dance to deserve a treat, especially not from yourself. And the only thing between you and this cookie is just a little bit of easy baking!

If you didn’t know, I’m still running the August treat, which are ice cream sandwiches, alongside the September treat, which is a bday cake cup. The treats are part of Extra Slice+™ which a subscription that includes a monthly treat for pick up + access to my premium articles with detailed recipes, progress, and behind-the-scenes to the creation of said monthly treat.

One of the options for the ice cream sandwiches is a zucchini oat cookie sandwich with vanilla ice cream swirled with maple butter and blueberry coulis. (Maple butter and blueberry coulis made by me from scratch!) This is where the zucchini oat cookie recipe is from.

This cookie comes together real quick. I would know because I’ve had to make this cookie like 4 times in one night (one batch I dropped and another I cut into the wrong shape lol). The zucchini adds moisture to make a sticky, chewy cookie without very much zucchini flavor. I almost wish there was zucchini flavor because that would be kind of awesome. There’s warmth from the cinnamon, molasses, and vanilla. It’s honestly just what an oat cookie should be like all the time: spicy, chewy, sticky, brown buttery. I didn’t add chocolate to my batches just because it was for ice cream sandwiches, but for standalone cookies, what is an oat cookie without chocolate? Answer is sad cookie. You could also add raisins and/or nuts if you’re in a grandma mood.

Anyways, I’d like to give credit where credit is due, so this recipe is heavily, heavily influenced by both Sally’s Baking’s zucchini oatmeal chocolate chip cookie + Justine Doiron’s sticky oaty zucchini cookies.

Zucchini Oat Cookie Recipe

Tbh idk how many cookies this is going to make for sure because I made this for ice cream sandwiches (so cookie bars). But it’ll be about 20-22 small cookies or 12-16 large ones.

You will need: a microplane/rasp grater

• 200g all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 160g zucchini (about a third of a large zucchini)

• 230g unsalted butter

• 170g old fashioned oats

• 100g dark brown sugar

• 130g white sugar

• 15g molasses

• 1 tsp vanilla

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 130ish grams of chocolate or half-half chocolate-raisin (measure with your heart)

1. Wash and dry zucchini. Then use a microplane to make a clump of shredded zucchini. Do not squeeze the water out. Set aside.

2. Brown butter: place butter into a pan, and heat until it melts, foams, and starts to brown. Add the oats when the butter becomes a little fragrant and there are little flecks of browned milk solids. The idea is to toast the oats while the butter finishes browning. When finished, remove off heat.

3. Add the zucchini, cinnamon, salt, molasses, and both sugars to the oat-butter mix. Combine, and then set aside to cool.

4. Sift the flour, nutmeg, baking powder into a big bowl.

5. Add the wet mix to the dry. Add the vanilla before combining. Fold/gently mix until there are no flour streaks.

   1. If adding toppings: add it while the dough is being combined, before being fully mixed. You don’t want to over-mix.

6. Rest in the fridge for 30 min-1 hour. Overnight or next day is good too.

7. Finally, scoop the cookies! Bring the batter to room tempish before scooping. It just makes it easier.

   1. I like small cookies, so I aim for 50g per cookie. But larger cookies will be 60-75g per cookie.

   2. It would be most awesome if you rested the scooped cookies for another day or two. It helps with flour absorption and flavor development. If I’m baking for myself, I would freeze the scooped cookies, which sorta functions as resting, and store the frozen cookies to bake and eat later.

8. Bake at 350F for 13 minutes. Cool completely before enjoying!