Zucchini Cookies

If you love oatmeal cookies, get ready to love our Zucchini Cookies. These cookies have all of the classic ingredients of a delicious cookie: butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. We added nutrition boosts with fiber-rich oats and whole-wheat flour, and zucchini to keep these cookies super moist. The mix of sugars and chocolate chips with nutmeg creates the perfect balance of sweetness and warmth—you’ll make these again and again. Keep reading for our expert tips on baking technique, ingredient substitutions and more. 

Tips from the EatingWell Test Kitchen

These are the key tips we learned while developing and testing this recipe in our Test Kitchen to make sure it works, tastes great and is good for you too! 

• Creaming softened butter and sugar ensures lighter, fluffier cookies that bake more evenly.
• We prefer using half whole-wheat flour for its taste and nutritional benefits, but if you prefer, all-purpose flour works just fine.
• Refrigerating the cookies for about 30 minutes before baking is important. It helps keep them from spreading too much on the cookie sheet while they bake.
• This recipe is also perfect for making smaller cookies. Just grab a smaller cookie scoop, and you’ll need a few more baking sheets. The cookies should bake in half the time, about 8 minutes.

Nutrition Notes

• Zucchini is low in calories, so while it adds bulk to baked goods, it doesn’t add a lot of extra calories. You’ll also get a small fiber boost.
• Oats are often added to cookies because of their flavor and ability to soak up some of the extra moisture. That’s also why the addition of oats in this recipe is perfect. Oats contain a special type of fiber called beta-glucan, which has been shown to help lower cholesterol in the blood—great for the heart!
• The addition of whole-wheat flour is a great way to increase fiber in your diet without changing the structure of your cookie. We use half all-purpose (white) flour and half whole-wheat to keep these light and fluffy. You can also choose to use white whole-wheat flour, which is still whole wheat, but made from a different type of wheat—you’ll get the same fiber benefits, but with a lighter-color flour.