Vegan Zucchini Cookies with Blueberries

Forget those sugary all-butter biscuits and treat yourself to one of our super-healthy vegan zucchini cookies.

By replacing the classic cookie ingredients with wholesome alternatives, you can now bake a no-guilt treat that bursts with precious nutrients. We swapped eggs, butter, white flour, and refined sugar with chia seeds, grated zucchini, oats, and dried blueberries.

Courgettes have a delicate, slightly sweet taste and they are often used in bakes like cakes and muffins. In this recipe, we blitzed and mixed them with oat flakes to make a moist dough with no need for butter.

Chia seeds help keep everything together thanks to their binding properties, and they also boost the recipe with omega-3, proteins, and fibres.

Using oatmeal instead of wheat flour means these cookies are not only 100% plant-based but also gluten-free. Moreover, oats pack slow-digesting carbs and gut-friendly soluble fibres, helping you stay full for longer and keeping blood sugars in check.

Finally, we ditched all refined sugars and relied on the natural sweetness of dried fruit like blueberries to make these breakfast cookies sugar-free. If you're following a diet plan or a low-sugar diet, this recipe is absolutely perfect for you. Imagine that each cookie comes with just 85 kcal, 5% of your RDI for carbs and 4% of your RDI for fats.

NOTE: The default ingredients yield 16 cookies and one serving consists of 2 cookies.

Step 1

Let's start by preparing the "chia-egg".

Combine chia seeds and water in a bowl and leave them to soak for 5-10 minutes in the fridge.

The seeds will absorb the water, swell, and form a thick and gel-like mixture.

Step 2

Meanwhile, rinse the zucchini, trim the ends, and keep the skin on.

Then, shred them using a box grater or blitz them in a food processor.

To remove excess moisture, gently pat the zucchini strips with kitchen paper.

Step 3

Next, add half of the oat flakes to a food processor and blitz them into a finely ground flour.

Keep the remaining oats as they are for the cookie dough.

Step 4

Now, add the "chia-egg", grated zucchini, oat flour, and oat flakes to a mixing bowl.

Tip in also the baking powder, cashew butter, and dried blueberries.

Work the ingredients until they come together into a moist and sticky dough.

If the mixture feels too wet, you can add more oats, or if too dry, pour in a splash of water or milk.

Step 5

At this point, you can optionally refrigerate the dough for 10-20 minutes to make it easier to handle.

To shape the cookies, pinch off a small handful of zucchini dough, roll into a bowl in between your palms, and then flatten it down onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

As the dough will be quite sticky, you can help yourself with a spoon or ice cream scooper and keep your hands wet while handling the mixture.

Press down with your fingertips to smooth out the cookies and sprinkle them with extra oat flakes, if you like.

Step 6

Finally, bake the oatmeal cookies for 15 minutes at 200°C (390°F) for static ovens or at 180°C (355°F) for fan ovens.

Then, transfer them onto a wire rack to cool down evenly and crisp up.

Tips

• You can swap dried blueberries with other dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, mango, or apricots. If you use fresh berries, the cookies will be less sweet, so we recommend adding 50-60g (1.7-2 oz) of maple syrup to the dough.

• For extra flavour, try tipping in the zest and juice of one orange.

• Check out our essential baking guide here for extra tips and hacks on how to get perfect bakes every time.

• As soon as the cookies have cooled down, immediately store them away in a tight-seal container, preferably a glass or tin one. That way, they will stay fresh for up to 3 days.