Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies
I’ve got a couple detectives in our house.
This morning they raided the coat closet for knee high boots and hooded jackets and dug through the bottom of toy box, sifting through broken crayons and stray book jackets to arm themselves with binoculars and magnifying glasses.
Me?
I have an alibi. I was was just innocently baking cookies.
Or was I?
Last week we enjoyed these cookies, shared by a friend at our family Bible study. My kids, at a rather serene moment for the group, fought over the last one. Loudly.
But today the detectives sensed something was afoot, perhaps when they saw four large green vegetables fall out of the fridge when I opened it to retrieve ingredients.
Oops.
They crept into the kitchen to examine, not looking the least bit conspicuous as they peered at me in their getups, tutus and swimsuits peeking out from the bottom of their unseasonable jackets.
Like vision impaired go-go dancing Eskimos.
Who like cookies.
If you are wondering when I’m going to stop putting zucchini in almost everything that is coming out of my kitchen, the answer is, “When I run out of zucchini.”
If you are wondering how I’ll keep getting my family to eat all this squash that falls out of my fridge every time I open it, the answer is “Chocolate. Lots of chocolate.”
I’ve made two batches in the last twenty-four hours.
Mystery solved.
Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 15-20 cookies
- 1/2 c. vegan margarine (i.e. Earth Balance), organic butter or coconut oil
- 1 organic or flax egg (1 T. ground flax + 3 T. water, whisked and allowed to sit until thickened)
- 1 c. stevia baking blend or sucanat
- 1 c. gluten free oat flour (or gluten free old-fashioned oats, finely ground) *
- 1 c. white rice flour*
- 1 t. baking soda
- 1 t. cinnamon
- 1/2 t. sea salt
- 1 medium zucchini, finely grated and squeezed dry to yield approximately 1. c**
- 1 c. chocolate chips
**The more finely you grate your zucchini, the less obvious it will be that there are green vegetables in these cookies. I like to used a microplane grater/zester for these.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Using an electric or stand mixer, cream together margarine, butter or coconut oil, egg and sweetener of your choice.
In a separate bowl, combine oat flour, rice flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
Add flour mixture to the wet ingredients and beat until well combined.
Fold in zucchini and chocolate chips.
Scoop dough out by heaping spoonful and place on a lightly greased or Silpat lined baking sheet.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, until cookies are set and lightly browned. Allow to cool for one minute before transferring to a cooling rack.
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*There’s still time to enter the Baby Bullet giveaway. A winner will be chosen Tuesday!
*There’s still time to get tickets to attend the Influence Conference on October 11-13th in Indianapolis. I’ll be speaking during Saturday’s Life Sessions and am feeling such nervous excitement. I can’t wait to share this fellowship with so many incredible people and would love to share it with you too. (Edited to add: you can win a ticket to attend from Hayley, aka The Tiny Twig, here!)
*There’s still time to enjoy the rest of your weekend—I hope you do!
Attempting to bake without oil, do you think these would be good with an oil replacement like apple sauce?
Yes, I think they’d work just fine! They might just be a bit more cakey/moist, but would still taste great.
I love being sneaky with my kids! Today I made chocolate chip cookie dough dip with garbanzo beans. On a normal basis my daughter won’t touch beans, but she begs me for this cookie dough dip. Your cookies look fabulous!!
Don’t you feel so accomplished when you do that? Muhahahaha!
I can’t even see the zuke in there, but I do see those heavenly chocolate chips oozing all over the place. YUM!
The ratio of chocolate to squash in this recipe is highly skewed.
Thank you for another zucchini recipe!!! I made your Garden Enchilada bake for supper and chocolate chip zucchini bread from your cookbook today.
Thank you for appreciating another zucchini recipe. I’m outta control.
Same here! My husband bought me a salad shooter (I giggle everytime I say it, how mature) for my 30th birthday (today) for all the zucchini I shred up every year. I am going to lose all my arm muscles! But I won’t miss the skinned knuckles.
This looks amazing!! Would I be able to sub Brown Rice Flour instead of white?? That’s all I have on hand. I’m new to the gluten-free world and didn’t know if that would make much of a difference or not! Thanks
Yes, it should work fine!
Love these recipes! Just got my mil to eat zucchini in your chocolate cake, I told her after bc she wouldn’t have tried it. She already said it was good so couldn’t complain! P. s. I’m not really passive aggressive
more tricky 
That sounds like a perfectly sound strategy to me…
Thanks for the gf recipe. I am making this tomorrow (likely several batches) thanks to the ginormous zucchini on my counter.
Oh good! Hope you love this recipe, Sherrie!
They are delicious! Very cake-like, so I made small cookies. I also added some snipped apricots to the last pan and those are really good too! I think a little cocoa powder to the mix would be nice too. I did use a Stevia/sugar blend that recommends using half what the recipe called for. Since I made a double batch, I only used 1 cup total of the blend. I wasn’t sure it would work or not, but it did!
Love your substitutions/additions! Thank you!
I was looking for a zucchini recipe on Friday and made your zucchini choc chip muffins!
This will be next in my rotation!
Oh good. I like your rotation!
The cookies look awesome – there’s actually quite a bit of zucchini on this hot island, strangely enough…now, if only I could find a grater! I made something with carrots yesterday and don’t have a grater and was literally dicing them as thin as I could by hand, strand by strand. Lol
I’m so glad you are having a great trip, Averie!
These look delicious and I love that they are gluten-free. Oh Sarah, always looking out for the tummy-sensitive people
My tummy has a mind of its own too. Hope you can make and enjoy these!
Oh my… you want to make these cookies to get rid of zucchini, and I want to go get a million zucchini just to make them!! You work some amazing magic missy! <3
and a million thank yous for making this a gluten free recipe!!
You are welcome!
sigh…sad news…it’s not looking like Influence is going to happen for me this year
BUT you are going to do so great, and you will most definitely, no matter what, bring glory to God through your words! and of course your cookies 
I have a nearly 3 hour layover in Denver on the flight there…and Chris is coming with me. Would love if you could come say hi!
DONE – you just let me know the flight time and I’ll be there!
a) where do you get sucanat
b) can I sub sugar? brown or white?
c) did you use sucanat in the monster cookies?
d) can I use it 1:1 in most recipes?
a) Lifesource (or whole foods)
Hope we are still on for Wednesday!
b) yes. Sub white sugar or a 2:3 ration of white/brown.
c) no. I used the stevia baking blend. It’s virtually sugar-free. I use it in all my baked goods.
d) yes.
e) I miss you.
Where do you get the stevia baking blend?
e) me too and yes for Wednesday. Cady had no fever today!
What a brilliant twist to cookies – I don’t know why I’ve never thought to do it. I have added zucchini to just about everything else, and can see cookies on my horizon now!
You will love them!
I think you could do a zucchini cookbook the same way Heinz did that ketchup cookbook, where every recipe has that ingredient in it. If all the recipes look as delicious as your last few, I’d buy it! (Of course, I bought your last book, so I may be biased.)
I know, I’m getting kind of out of hand. Just have a ton of these squash! Thanks for the love.
My family could have used this recipe (and other zucchini) ones when I was a kid and we had a garden. We always had a mega surplus of zucchini! And now I hope I can find some fresh here in Scotland!
I love adding veggies to foods they don’t traditionally belong in. These cookies look like something that should make an appearance at my house.
Thanks for sharing Mama Pea!
Made these this afternoon with my 3yr old and he’s already eaten 3. We won’t talk about how many I’ve had. Better than zucchini bread and so fluffy!! LOVE them! thx
Oh good, I’m so glad you guys love them as much as we do!
Ok, I didn’t want to ask on the giveaway site, but does this mean you are going to have another baby?! ::::squeal:::: That would be so exciting!
You never know!
Yummy! Can’t wait to try those. You know about AmpleHarvest.org, right? Great place to help you figure out where to donate your excess fresh food to pantries and people in need!
YUM! We are pretty much done with zucchini here (our seasons must be earlier than yours because we were done with strawberries well before you started getting yours), but if I get any more I will make these!
I made your grandmother’s pie crust Saturday and it turned out great. I have few phobias with baking, but pie crust is one of them. I made my husband a blueberry pie with an oatmeal crumble topping that I made up myself. Turned out great.
Beth, that just touches my heart! I’m so glad you liked the pie.
There is no end in sight for the zucchini in our garden…I am thrilled that you are now putting it in cookies. Just absolutely thrilled.
Your kid likes green things. You are in like Flynn with these cookies.
My girlfriend directed me to your site! I LOVE your attitude, share your faith and am striving for delish, dairy & meat free meals for my family. My husband and I have two beautiful daughters 8 (almost) and 4 1/2. Just made these cookies a few hours ago and they were wonderful! We dunked them hot and fresh into cold almond milk (a huge hit) I will be making your garden enchilada bake tomorrow for guest coming over. Was so impressed with how well the Daiya cheese sub. melted in my veggie pizza bombs tonight! I am now a huge fan and will frequent your blog often. THANK YOU!
Thank you so much. I’m so happy to have you on board this crazy train! I hope you continue to enjoy!
Perfect timing! I was just about to scour the internet for recipes to use up my overflowing garden of zucchini! One can only make so many zucchini breads and stir fry.
I hear ya. Enjoy!
Made these this evening and they turned out awesome! Even my zucchini hating bf liked them. Thanks!!
Yes! Victory! (you are welcome)
genius! mom sister is needed more ways to get veggies into Joy’s diet (my niece)
will have to share this one with her
Is it wrong that I’m making these for breakfast right now??? What can I say? Groceries are low, zucchini is abundant….chocolate is ALWAYS good. Don’t think less of me
I couldn’t possibly think less of you. In fact, I didn’t think I could think more of you until I read this. Tell Jed we had friends over yesterday and I had to hide his book.
Your posts are always the greatest
Your little girls are the cutest and I definitely need to make these cookies! I’ve never used Zucchini in baking anything sweet so I need to try!
Thank you, Natalie!
Oh My! I made these last night and they are AMAZING!!!! Everyone in my house loved them as well as the people I shared with at work! THANK YOU FOR MAKING THEM GLUTEN FREE
Wonderful! My pleasure, Katie. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks these look amazing!! I think I’m going to try these for my party this weekend!
These were fabulous, thanks for the recipe! It was an added bonus that I didn’t have to feel bad about letting my toddler have some.
Win win! Glad they were a hit, Sara.
Hey there….just wanted to say, ‘thank you!’ I made these Monday night, and they were gone by Tuesday night!! My husband, who initially, asked why I couldn’t make anything with ‘normal’ ingredients loved them, and so did his co-workers. In fact, they’ve placed an order for more!! And my 7 and and 3 year old daughters loved them, too – even after I told them the ‘secret ingredient.’ Thank you again!!
You are welcome! Hooray for not being “normal!”
I’d love to make these, however, I’m not a big fan of Stevia. . how much ‘regular’ sugar should I use?
The same exact amount!
Hi Mama, I made these (sort of) and I decided to put them in bar cookie format (hello 1980′s!) because they didn’t form into a mushy/moist cookie-like dough. Do you think it was maybe because I used Egg Replacement instead of eggs or flax eggs? Just wondering. I’m still trying to master the whole Egg Replacement thing, not sure if I like them or not. They were still yummy as bar cookies, just crumbly. I’m eating them all by myself because I didn’t grate the zucchini fine enough and my kids said, “we know you put something green in those cookies!” Oh well, their loss, punks.
Hmm…you probably needed to bake them longer in bar form. Bars take longer to bake than individual cookies because of the surface area. I’m also curious if you squeezed a good deal of moisture out of the zucchini? If you didn’t grate them finely, there probably was still a lot of moisture in them which left your batter wetter. Just a few thoughts! It’s hard for me to vouch for the recipe when it’s modified, but the way it’s written, we love ‘em! Good luck!
I made these today with my daughter. We used brown rice flour instead of white because that’s what I had on hand. They were delicious! I had to stop myself from eating more than two. Thanks for the wonderful recipe.
I love it! Thanks for the feedback, Jill.
Hi there, your cookies look amazing! I really wanna make them but I had a few questions:
I don’t have Vegan margarine so can I use the same amount of regular margarine? (since regular margarine has a different fat content)
I also don’t have Stevia, would 1 cup of white sugar work fine?
And as for the 1 cup of Oat flour and 1 cup of rice flour, I noticed it says at the bottom of the recipe to substitute that for unbleched organic or whole wheat pastry flour. I have unbleached all purpose flour so would I need in total 2 cups of that to substitute for the oat and rice flour?
Thanks!
Yes, to all those questions!
Use margarine or butter instead of the vegan margarine.
White sugar will sub fine.
Sub 2 cups of all purpose flour for the oat and rice flour.
Good luck!
Thanks!