These healthy Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies are soft, nourishing oatmeal cookies filled with shredded zucchini and oats. Bonus, these zucchini cookies are refined sugar-free, egg-free, and dairy-free!
I love making healthy cookies with vegetables, like my Spinach Cookies, Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, or Carrot Oatmeal Cookies. Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies are healthy breakfast cookies perfect for using your fresh summer zucchini.
They are soft, moist, and taste like zucchini bread but way faster to make, ready in less than 30 minutes to enjoy a healthy sweet treat.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- Shredded Zucchini – I used about 1 medium zucchini. Keep the skin on to adds nutrients and fiber to the cookie recipe. Grate as fine as you can and drain in a clean kitchen towel to remove all the zucchini excess water.
- Melted Coconut Oil or melted vegan butter, or light olive oil.
- Maple Syrup or agave syrup, or brown rice syrup for a low GI sweetener.
- Brown Sugar or coconut sugar – you can skip this to decrease the sugar amount per cookie, but I found the cookie crispier and tastier with the combination of both sweeteners.
- Mashed Banana or unsweetened applesauce.
- Vanilla Extract – for flavor.
- White Whole Wheat Flour or all-purpose flour, or homemade oat flour. For gluten-free zucchini cookies, use a gluten-free flour blend that contains gums, like Bob Red Mills 1:1 gluten-free all-purpose flour.
- Quick-Cooking Oats, not instant oats! You can also use rolled oats, but the cookie texture is dryer with this option. For the gluten-free option, use gluten-free certified oats.
- Baking Soda and Baking Powder – for just a little rise.
- Ground Cinnamon – for perfect flavors.
- Dark Chocolate Chips or chopped pecans, or a combination of both.
How To Make Zucchini Cookies
It’s very simple to make Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies using only a few natural ingredients.
The main ingredient of zucchini cookies is shredded zucchini! So it is essential to prepare the zucchini very well to ensure a delicious, moist, and fluffy cookie.
- First, trim the edges of the zucchini and keep the skin on. All the nutrients and vitamins are in the zucchini skin, so don’t peel off the zucchini to make your cookies nutrient-dense.
- Then, use a hand grater or a food processor with the smaller grating tool/side. Grate the zucchini as finely as possible.
- Then, place the grated zucchini in a clean kitchen towel or cheesecloth. Gather the corners of the towel, twist, and squeeze as hard as possible to remove the excess zucchini juice.
- Discard the juice, or keep it for another recipe like a soup.
- Keep the shredded, drained zucchini in a bowl aside.
- Meanwhile, prepare baking sheets. Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper and lightly oil with olive oil or coconut oil. Set aside.
- First, in a large bowl, whisk together apple sauce, melted coconut oil, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and vanilla.
- Then, stir in the shredded, drained zucchini. Set aside.
- In another mixing bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Finally, stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until a wet batter forms. It should look like a zucchini bread batter.
- Stir in 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips or 1/4 cup of chopped pecans and 1/4 cup of dark chocolate chips. I love zucchini chocolate chip pecan cookies, so I always mix both, but it’s up to you!
- Shape 18 zucchini oatmeal chocolate chip cookies of about 2 tablespoons of batter each.
- Place each cookie on the prepared cookie sheet, leaving half thumb space between each cookie. Wet your finger, and press the top of each cookie gently to flatten slightly.
- Bake the cookies in the center rack of the preheated oven at 350°F (180°C) until the cookies have a light golden brown color and the sides are crispy.
- Cool down for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Wait for about 15 minutes to 1 hour before eating. If you eat them lukewarm, the cookies will be soft and moist with melted chocolate in the center. But if you wait for a bit longer, which I recommend if you can, the zucchini oatmeal cookies firm up with time. The top is getting crispier after a few hours, and since the chocolate chips harden, you enjoy a nice chocolate crunch!
Storage Instructions
Store the cookies in the fridge in a sealed cookie jar for up to 5 days. You can also freeze the zucchini oatmeal cookies for up to 3 months in airtight bags or containers. Thaw the cookies on a rack at room temperature the day before serving.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can use frozen shredded zucchini in this zucchini cookie recipe.
Make sure you thaw the shredded zucchini first and then drain them from all their juice, or the cookies will be too soft.
These zucchini oatmeal cookies are crispy on the edges and moist and soft in the center.
They are not overly sweet, just what you expect from a healthy breakfast cookie.
Plus, you won’t feel the zucchini flavor at all, and therefore these zucchini cookies with chocolate chips are perfect for sneaking in extra greens to your day whiteout even noticing it!
More Vegan Zucchini Recipes
If you’ve enjoyed this recipe, you’ll love the following:
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Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup Shredded Zucchini - finely grated, excess water removed – about 1 medium zucchini.
- ¼ cup Melted Coconut Oil - or melted vegan butter
- ⅓ cup Maple Syrup
- ¼ cup Coconut Sugar - or unrefined cane sugar
- ½ cup Unsweetened Applesauce - or mashed bananas
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 cup White Wholewheat Flour - or all-purpose flour or oat flour
- 1 cup Quick Oats - not instant!
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 1 ½ teaspoon Baking Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Baking Soda
- ¼ teaspoon Cinnamon
- ½ cup Dairy-Free Dark Chocolate Chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Slightly oil the paper with olive oil, cooking spray, or coconut oil. Set aside.
- Trim zucchini ends, keep their skin on, and grate as finely as you can using the thinner grating attachment of your food processor or hand box grater.
- Place the shredded zucchini in a towel, gather the corner of the towel, and squeeze as hard as you can to release all the zucchini juice. Discard juice, keep the drained shredded zucchini aside in a bowl.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk applesauce, maple syrup, coconut sugar, melted coconut oil, and vanilla extract. Stir in shredded zucchini. Set aside.
- In another bowl, combine flour, quick-cooking oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
- Stir the dry ingredients into the liquid ingredients until a sticky, moist batter forms – it should resemble a zucchini bread batter.
- Scoop about 2 tablespoons of batter to form one cookie and place it on the prepared cookie sheet. Slightly flatten the top of the cookie with wet fingers and repeat until you create about 18 cookies. Leave half a thumb of space between each cookie, even if they won't expand much in the oven. It makes it easier to remove them from the cookie sheet later.
- Bake the cookies for 20-25 minutes at 350°F (180°C) until golden brown and crispy on the edges.
- Cool the cookies down for 5 minutes on the cookie sheets and then transfer for 1 hour on a cooling rack.
Storage
- Store in the fridge in a sealed cookie jar for up to 5 days or freeze in zipper bags and thaw at room temperature the day before.
hi, can I Exchange the Apple also with berries, eg Blueberrysauce? i must not eat too much Fructose, so both Apple and Banana I need to have an eye on. thx!
Blueberry sauce won’t bind ingredients like applesauce or mashed banana, the cookies will be fragile and ultra soft.
These cookies are so easy to make and are so moist and delicious!! The recipe is a keeper!!
Excellent recipe. No mention of chocolate chips in directions and only In ingredients so almost forgot to add them. A little sweet so next time I’ll go with a tad bit less sugar!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. We have had a bumper crop of zucchinis this summer (we are in Victoria, Australia)….so have been making zucchini everythings!!! 😉 ). We came across your recipe here a couple of weeks ago and have been making double quantities ever since!!! We LOVE them…they are so delish!!!!! The only thing I did differently is put in raisins instead of choc bits because sometimes I find the choc taste overpowering in some cakes and cookies…my daughter made them with vegan choc and loved them (but didn’t save a taste for me 🙁 ….).
THANK YOU FOR YOUR RECEIPES. THEY LOOK YUM AND HEALTHY, I JUST DON’T SEEM TO SEE ANY AMOUNTS FOR THE INGREDIENTS. I WOULDN’T KNOW HOW MUCH OF EACH INGREDIENT TO PUT IN THE MIXTURE.
IS THAT HOW IT WORKS?
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LETTING ME KNOW
LUCY MURRAY
The full recipe measurement appears in the recipe card above this comment section, simply scroll up to see it. Enjoy the cookies, XOXO Carine