I am a big fan of adding extra fruit or vegetables into recipes…they can contribute a lot of nutrients such as fiber, vitamins, minerals and are generally low in fat and calories. And also, I think they are delicious. But you still need to be careful with what you add to your fruits and veggies. Yes, french fries are made from potatoes but when you deep fry them you can no longer call them healthy. Zucchini bread is also great in theory, you can hide some veggies in a delicious mixture of sugar and all purpose flour, but the sugar and refined flour part really isn’t so good for you. But no worries, you can definitely make it healthier by replacing refined flour with whole grains or nut flour and using less sugar, and maybe using something like fruit to help sweeten it a healthier way.

So last weekend I wanted to try making a healthy gluten free zucchini bread as a treat to share for after yoga, but didn’t want to have to worry about slicing it up and plates etc… so I decided to make it in cookie form, and it worked out really well. Everyone seemed to really like them and I hope you do too! I will definitely be making these again…maybe next time I will try and make them in mini muffin form 🙂

Gluten Free Zucchini Bread Cookies

Ingredients
1 Medium Banana, Mashed
1 Cup Shredded Zucchini
1 Egg
1/2 Cup Uncooked Quinoa
1 Cup Almond Flour
1/4 Cup Honey
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bring 1 cup of water to boil in a medium saucepan. Add quinoa and cover and reduce to a simmer for about 15 min or until quinoa is cooked. Add almond flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt to a large mixing bowl and stir. Add egg, mashed banana, zucchini, vanilla, honey and mash together with a spoon until uniform. Add quinoa after it is done cooking and is mostly cooled; stir in. Drop by spoonfuls down onto a parchment paper lined baking tray. Batter won’t be as thick as usual cookie dough and consistency will be more like thick muffin batter. Bake for about 30 minutes or until cookies become slightly brown on edges and cooked through.