Looking for some yummy zucchini ideas?

This time of year and even earlier, I'm sure, a few of you have been looking for some new spins on the sometimes dreaded vegetable. Zucchini is one of those things that you either don't have enough of or you have more than you will ever use in your lifetime.

For years I struggled with a brown thumb when it came to growing zucchini. I couldn't figure out why other people could grow enough for a small country and I couldn't grow one decent zucchini to save my life! I've always been the one that could as many as anyone could spare.

This year, I planted several plants, hoping to get something for the effort. It didn't look good, so when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted some from her neighbor, I jumped on it. I told her I'd take as much as she could spare. What she brought to me was a load of the biggest zucchini I had ever seen!

Once I had them, I started in making my zucchini relish, a treat that my friends and family ask for year after year. It's a simple recipe that I found in the Ball Canning Book several years ago. I make pint after pint of it every year, it usually ends up in gift baskets or just eaten by my family with just about anything you'd serve relish with. It's so good.

Well, once I had gone through much of that load of zucchini a very unexpected thing happened. Can you guess what that could be? Yep, you guessed it....MY zucchini plants took off and started getting huge and putting out blossoms. It was late in the summer, so I honestly didn't expect to get much. Was I in for a shock!

We've had a lot of good weather this fall here in the Northwest and my zucchini has done amazingly well! Today, I set my daughter to the task of grating up a bunch of the larger ones and putting them in freezer bags for future zucchini breads, muffins, cakes and other yummy treats.

This inspired me to do some looking for some recipes to try out for my blog. Besides, I needed to make some goodies for my family and to also take to a meeting I have in the morning. What better time to have a baking spree and use some of my garden's bounty!

The first recipe I tried is zucchini muffins, the recipe is for a bread, but there are also instructions for muffins at the bottom. I was short on time, so I opted for the muffins version. After all, I had more recipes to try!

These muffins turned out fairly well, not exactly what I was looking for, but my kids loved them! I was able to get 24 large muffins, made in a regular sized muffin cup pan. The texture is a bit more spongy than I would have liked, but they are a tasty treat regardless of what I would have liked. Who am I, my kids loved them, that should be good enough!

My next selection was a zucchini carrot muffin. The mixture of ground seeds and nuts along with the grated zucchini, carrot and apple was very appealing to me! Very hearty sounding and so good for you too. My daughter thought these muffins needed less carrots, I thought it could use a bit more apple. I will have to play some more with this recipe, but overall if was a really good muffin!

The recipe calls for you to grind the nuts and seeds in a coffee grinder. I ended up using my blender and it worked pretty well. Here in my house, tree nuts are off limits. This recipe calls for almonds, I just increased the sunflower seeds to replace the almonds. I'm sure almonds would be wonderful in these muffins though, hazelnuts would also be yummy!

The last recipe I tried today was chocolate zucchini cake. This is one of my old favorites from our gluten eating days. Even zucchini-phobic people would love this cake! It's a moist, rich, chocolaty cake with a yummy chocolate frosting. Sure to satisfy ANY chocolate craving, and get in another bit of vegetables into your diet. I'm sure the sugar kind of counteracts the vegetable benefit, but it sounded good anyway. :)

Even if you didn't want to frost this yummy cake, a slight dusting of powdered sugar would do nicely too! Another thing I did was to leave the cinnamon out. I have never cared for cinnamon in my zucchini cake, but that is just me. I also decided to make this in a bundt pan instead of a loaf or tube pan.

Do you like chocolate and orange flavors together? The chocolate zucchini cake also has orange rind in it and gives you a slight orange after taste. Personally, I would like to try and get more orange flavor in this cake, it was so good! My family loved this and even your gluten eating friends and family would find this on the top of their favorites list. No one would know if you didn't tell them that it's gluten-free, honestly! It is that good.

The options for zucchini are about as limitless as there are people trying to unload the abundance of them from their gardens. Zucchini is one of my favorite vegetables. When I can make a yummy dessert with it, I like it even more! If you have a neighbor leaving you zucchini on your doorstep, find some in your unlocked car at church on Sunday, or find your own garden producing a bounty of beautiful zucchini...now you have some new options to try!