Zucchini Recipes: Two delicious and easy recipes for you to try

Use up all those zucchini from your garden with these two easy and tasty recipes.

It’s the time of year when the garden is overflowing with zucchini. I am very grateful about this because they are such a useful vegetable. I planted five plants this summer, which are producing 2-3 zucchini a week. So, we have a lot of these veges to use up.

I use them mainly in stir fries, curries, and pasta sauce. And I chop them and freeze them, to use all year around. Any surplus vegetabes don’t go to waste, as I can use them in these two delicious recipes.

The two recipes here are Spicy zucchini soup and Zucchini chocolate cake.

Spicy zucchini soup

This soup has a spicy kick, you could make it hotter by increasing the curry powder. It freezes well too (remembering to label the container with the recipe name and date).

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Total: 30 minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 500g zucchini, sliced
• One onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon white rice
• 4 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
• 3/4 cup cream or coconut milk
• Salt to taste

Method

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
2. Cook zucchini and onion and garlic in the butter for around 4 to 5 minutes.
3. Add curry powder, ground ginger, cumin, rice, and stock. Stir it all together. Cover saucepan and simmer for around 20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
4. Puree soup, and season with salt to taste.
5. Add the cream or coconut milk and reheat. Do not boil.
6. If it’s too thick, add more water.

Zucchini chocolate cake

This cake is so delicious, and very easy to make because it is an all-in-one-bowl recipe.

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 50 minutes

Total: 1 hour 10 minutes

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• 110g softened butter
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons cocoa
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1/4 cup ground walnuts (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. Grease a 20cm cake tin.
2. Cream butter, oil and sugar.
3. Add eggs, milk and vanilla essence, and beat well.
4. In another bowl, sift the dry ingredients together. Blend the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Add the grated zucchini and walnuts (if using) and mix well.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.
6. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.
7. Cool cake completely before icing with chocolate icing.

Let me know in the comments if you try these recipes, and what you think of them.

Links to more zucchini recipes:

Click these links for some more recipes to try:

• A one pot pasta dish
• Fritters with feta
• Crustless quiche

Links to my other recipes:

In conclusion, I love finding recipes that use produce from my garden. Check out these recipes using common home grown fruit in New Zealand:

• Lemon recipes
• Lime recipes
• Feijoa Cake
• Pumpkin Soup – made in the slow cooker

Recommendations for other recipes

Do you have any recipes using zucchini that you’d recommend?

Please comment below with a link.