Zucchini Lemon Cookies

Growing up my parents often planted vegetable in our garden. In fact, there was one summer that I set up a little table in front of our house with my Vegetables For Sale sign. I don't think I did much business, but it was a fun kid thing to do. That sign hung in our garage for years, and my mom had it framed for my graduation from WSU. We grew zucchini in our yard--though I do not remember ever eating it. What I do remember is harvesting zucchini the size of baseball bats and taking them to KinderCare to give to my teachers. I was so proud of how huge they were, and completely unaware how not-useful that was.

At work on Wednesday someone brought in a few zucchini that were past their tender-for-eating size. I snagged one, with this Zucchini Lemon Cookie recipe in mind. Well, it didn't really work out. But I'm still posting this recipe because it was so pretty in the making, and with a few tweaks I think it would work out just fine. The first major problem being I need to pick up some new baking powder. You'll see the photos--these cookies are flat!! The other change I'll make for my next attempt will be to not grease the baking sheets. 1 batch of the 3 was baked on an ungreased sheet, and the cookies that batch yielded are a bit less flat than those that came off of the greased sheets. Another note: the zucchini can contribute a ton of moisture to the cookie dough. Because of this, I added some additional flour so that I actually had a dough--before that I had more of a batter.

Making the dough was very simple: Cream 3/4 cup butter with 3/4 cup sugar. Mix in 1 egg. Stir in 2 Tbl lemon zest and 1 cup shredded zucchini. In a separate bowl combine 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of coarse salt. Then slowly add the dry mixture to the wet.

The dough looks... odd. In the picture above it looks a little like some sort of chip dip. I had to add some extra flour to thicken everything up so that when I dropped my tablespoons of dough onto my cookie sheets they actually kept their shapes. Bake at 375.

And that's what I got--flat cookies. Not impressive. In the lower photo there are a few cookies that don't look as flat--they came from the ungreased cookie sheet. I still have more than half that zucchini left, so maybe I'll get some fresh baking powder and try again soon.  Any input as to reasons for cookie flatness is appreciated!