bakingwithtradition.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a way for websites to earn advertising revenues by advertising and linking to recommended products. Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.

These zucchini cookies loaded with chocolate and chewy oatmeal with a little punch of spice and a chocolate will make all your squash woes fade into the background.

Me: “Try one”.

Son #1 (will eat anything, dubious, but stuffs down the whole thing in 3 bites): They’re good but why do they exist?

If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you already know the answer. One day there will be zero zucchini in the garden. The next day there will be 16 and two of them will likely be the size of a bass clarinet. While there’s people like me who would happily eat a plate full of thinly sliced zucchini that’s been lightly sauteed in olive oil, there’s only so much squash you can eat.

The rest of it is a candidate for sneaky recipes like this. No, my squash haters, they don’t taste like zucchini. Instead they taste like perfect chewy oatmeal cookies kissed with the alluring bite of clove to boost the chocolate flavor.

So if you’ve got a glut of zucchini sitting on the counter or left on your doorstep by a mysterious neighbor, add this zucchini cookies recipe to your file!

zucchini cookies drizzled with chocolate

Oatmeal Zucchini Cookies with Chocolate

Affiliate disclosure

Why zucchini in a cookie isn’t as horrible as it sounds

closeup of zucchini cookies drizzled with chocolate

It adds moisture: we’ll squeeze out most of the moisture, but what’s left will make for the perfect chewy cookie.
You can’t taste it: zucchini is pretty tasteless on its own, so it works surprisingly well in baking recipes.
Green!: If you look closely, you’ll see pretty flecks of green throughout your cookies. Usually that means something awful like kale, but here, it’s like a friendly healthy looking sprinkle.
Using up the season’s harvest: I hate wasting food; I’m guessing you do too. This recipe is a solid way to make sure that the squash doesn’t end up in the bin.

stack of zucchini cookies drizzled with chocolate with text overlay

Ingredients for chocolate zucchini cookies

Butter
Brown sugar
Granulated sugar
Baking powder
Salt
Cloves: I grind whole cloves fresh, but you can use ground cloves
Egg

Vanilla
Zucchini: a normal sized one is good here. Larger ones are better for muffins, bread, or cake.
Oats: old-fashioned rolled oats
Flour: All-purpose
Chocolate chips: some for the batter, some for the melted decoration later.

Process for making zucchini cookies

Grind: if you’re using whole cloves, grind them in a mortar & pestle or a small coffee grinder.
Cream: cream the butter, sugars plus the baking powder, salt and cloves until the butter is as light and fluffy as it would be if you were making buttercream frosting.
Grate: Grate that zucchini. It’s soft enough I love my Microplane ribbon grater.
Squeeze: scoop the zucchini into paper towels, a nut milk bag, or a clean kitchen towel and wring out as much of the juice as you can.
Fold: fold the zucchini into the creamed butter.
Add the dry ingredients: add the oats, chocolate chips, and flour and mix until you get a thick, scoopable dough.
Scoop and chill: scoop balls that are about 1 and 1/2 ounces (that’s two scoops of my Vollrath purple scoop). Chill the balls in the fridge for 10-15 minutes to chill the butter slightly.
Bake: Place 8 balls of dough on a parchment lined sheet tray. Flatten the cookies with your hand. You can bake 2 sheets at a time. Bake until the cookies are firm and just beginning to brown around the edges.
Chocolate: melt the rest of the chocolate in a double boiler. I like to pipe it, but you could swizzle it with a fork too–either way, make stripes across the tops of each cookie.
Chill: pop the decorated cookies back in the fridge just until the chocolate sets.

stack of zucchini cookies drizzled with chocolate

Things you should do if you want to have tasty chocolate zucchini cookies, not sad ones

Grind the cloves from whole cloves: Your cookies will taste better with cloves that are fresh ground. Zingy cloves wake up chocolate’s flavor in a way you didn’t know was possible. Use the ancient tin of ground cloves so old you could sell it on Ebay as “vintage”, and you won’t have the same effect.
I sure did say 10 minutes: This weirds out my baking students, but creaming the butter and the sugar as long as I do makes for the best texture. I’ve literally had students get nervous about how long it takes and turn off the mixer. Soldier on. In that time the sugar dissolves more, and this gives cookies the most incredible edgy texture. At my altitude, they do spread a little more, but I care not. I want the texture. You should too.
Get that water out: the extra moisture from zucchini is excellent in something like zucchini bread, but it is an enemy here. Squeeze as much of the juice out as you can.
Lazy tempering: when you melt your chocolate for decoration, only melt half of it. Once it’s barely melted, you can toss in the rest of the unmelted chocolate. Keep stirring occasionally until all of the chocolate is melted. The unmelted chocolate will cool down the melted chocolate, making sure that it never gets too hot and that it thickens enough to spread into glossy lines over the cookies. This will not give you perfectly tempered chocolate, but it gets close when you don’t want to fuss with thermometers.

Zucchini Cookies with chocolate will make you love squash

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

No reviews

Author: Elizabeth Farr
Total Time: 66
Yield: 24 cookies

Print Recipe

Description

Use up your Summer crop of zucchini in these perfect chewy oatmeal cookies. Topped with chocolate, loaded with chocolate chips and the alluring edge of ground cloves, you’ll get your vegetables in one of the tastiest ways possible.

Ingredients

Scale

2 sticks butter (227 grams), at room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar (213 grams)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (100 grams)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp whole cloves or ground cloves
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste
1 small zucchini
2 cups old fashioned rolled oats (190 grams)
2 cups all-purpose flour (260 grams)
1 cup chocolate chips

For decoration

1/2cup chocolate chips or 2 oz dark chocolate, chopped

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

1. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.

2. Grind the cloves in a mortar & pestle or a coffee grinder as finely as you can get it. grinding cloves in mortar and pestle

3. Cream the butter with the sugars, baking powder, salt, and cloves on low speed (Kitchen Aid 1 or with a hand mixer) until very well blended and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the mixer several times. This should take 10 minutes in a cold kitchen and about 6-7 in a warm kitchen.

4. While the butter is beating, grate the zucchini on a box grater or with a Microplane ribbon grater. shredded zucchini after squeezing and zucchini juice Gather up the zucchini into paper towels, a clean tea towel, or a nut milk bag and squeeze out as much of the zucchini juice as possible. You should get at least 2 Tablespoons of liquid out of your zucchini and more if you’re using a slightly heavier zucchini than I did.

5. When the butter mixture is fluffy, add in the egg and vanilla, then beat for a few more seconds. adding eggs to creamed butter and sugar

6. Mix the squeezed out zucchini into the creamed butter. folding zucchini into batter

7. Scrape the bowl and beater well, paying attention to the bottom of the bowl which always likes to hide a little pocket of unmixed butter.

8. After you’ve finished scraping, pour in the oats, flour and chocolate chips. Mix just until you see no flour–about 10 seconds. chocolate chips, oats, and flour in bowl

9. Scoop balls about 1 and ½ ounces onto a piece of parchment. Chill the dough balls for 10-15 minutes to firm up the butter. This will help keep the cookies from browning too much. balls of zucchini cookie dough

10. Preheat the oven to 350 F (180C).

11. Place the dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets. Place 8 cookies to a sheet, leaving plenty of room between cookies. Flatten the dough balls with your hand.

12. Bake two prepared sheet pans of cookies for 16-18 minutes, rotating the sheets 180 degrees and swapping them from top to bottom halfway through baking for the most even baking. baked zucchini cookies

13. Allow the cookies to cool about 5 minutes on the sheet pans before moving them to a rack to completely cool.

14. Bake extra dough on cooled sheet trays. If they’re too hot, you can place them in a cool table outside, or stand them vertically against a cabinet for a couple minutes.

15. Melt half of the chocolate you have set aside for decorating in a double boiler just until melted. Take the chocolate off the heat and add in the rest of the chocolate. Stir occasionally until the chocolate is melted completely, thick, and glossy. Either pipe stripes of chocolate over the top of each cookie or swizzle it over with a fork. zucchini cookies drizzled with chocolate