There are never too many healthy snack ideas out there. The same can not be said about overgrown zucchini, and even if I always try to pick all the zucchinis while they are still nice and firm, it sometimes happens that I am away from home for a few days and when I come back, there are a few overgrown beasts out in my zucchini bed. I never recommend using overly large zucchinis, but once you have them, this is one of the recipes that helps to use them up and does not suffer much from the zucchinis being overgrown.
For the first time in my 36 years of life, I had too many zucchinis for my own plants, and I am actually pleased about it. I gifted a few of them and ate around a ton of zucchini throughout the summer. Even today, mid-September, if the temperature is only around 14 degrees and it has been raining for the past 2 weeks, some of the plants are still flowering. Therefore, I still plan to eat zucchini flowers this year and maybe even get a few more baby-zucchinis.
Back to the recipe. I have made this countless times over the last few years and translating the recipe to you now, I just decided that this would be today’s dinner too. Zucchini keeps all kinds of baked goods nice and juicy, and onion, cheese, and sundried tomatoes give these little bites a ton of flavor. You can also play around with flavors here and add peppers, capers, red onion, or even corn to the basic recipe, and it still tastes good every single time. You can also play around with different shapes – bake them in larger tins or even on a sheet pan, and cut it to squares later. Changing the size means that you need to play around with baking time, but as every oven is slightly different, you need to keep an eye on during the baking time anyway.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that thanks to the buckwheat flour, the bites are accidentally gluten-free.
Zucchini Bites with Buckwheat Flour
Cooking time: 35 min
Ingredients:
1 large or 2 smaller zucchinis (about 1 pound)
3.5 oz (vegetarian) parmesan cheese
1 stalk of green onion
2.5 oz sundried tomatoes, drained
½ cup buckwheat flour
3 eggs (always use free range)
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
A tiny bit of oil or butter for muffin tins
Salt
Instructions:
Grate the zucchini, sprinkle with salt and leave it for a few minutes so that the salt could draw out some moisture from the zucchini.
Preheat the oven to 360 F, and butter or oil the muffin tins – I used the tiny ones. If using the larger ones, the cooking time will slightly increase.
Grate the cheese; chop the green onion and sundried tomatoes.
Now squeeze out as much moisture as you can from the zucchini and add it to the other ingredients. Mix and season with pepper (the salt is already in the zucchini and parmesan, but if you feel that you need more, add a tiny bit of salt too).
Add the eggs and buckwheat flour to the same bowl and mix well. Right before you are ready to bake, mix in the baking powder.
Divide the mixture between muffin tins (I got 24 tiny bites), sprinkle with sunflower seeds, and bake for around 15 minutes until they are nice and golden.
Once ready, turn the muffin tin upside down and let them cool for 5 minutes on the rack. This way, the steam helps to loosen the muffins from the tins.
By Kadri Raig
Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee.
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