Enjoy the abundance of late summer produce by baking up these incredibly moist zucchini cookies!
Zucchini is great in baking from zucchini bread to brownies and also great for making cookies extra soft and moist! These melt-in-your-mouth, fluffy cookies are topped with a delicious cream cheese frosting.
Extra Soft Zucchini Cookies
- Zucchini makes baking extra moist and soft.
- These are great with or without frosting.
- Add your favorite add-ins from chocolate chips to nuts.
- These can be made ahead of time and freeze well.
What’s in Zucchini Cookies?
DOUGH: The cookie dough for this recipe has sugar, flour, eggs, and butter.
ZUCCHINI: Shredded zucchini gives these cookies an extra soft and moist texture.
FROSTING: Cream cheese, powdered sugar, and cream make the perfect flavor combination for zucchini cookies! Tart and sweet and whipped up fluffy, it turns a regular cookie into a real treat! Mix in a little lemon, coconut, or maple extract for a new twist.
Other Add-Ins
- There are lots of delicious add-ins that make zucchini cookies even more fun to bake and eat! Try mini chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, chopped nuts, or toffee pieces!
- Or add in some dried fruits like chopped dates, raisins, mangoes, or cherries.
How to Make Zucchini Cookies
- Cream butter & sugars until fluffy. Add eggs & zucchini, mix thoroughly.
- Whisk dry ingredients together. Combine dry with wet (per the recipe below.)
- Chill dough and then bake until lightly browned on the edges and the tops spring back when touched.
Be sure to cool the cookies completely before frosting. If the cookies are warm, they will melt the frosting. These are frosted with cream cheese frosting but you can use your favorite frostings from chocolate to lemon buttercream.
Tips for Perfect Cookies
- Use room temperature large eggs.
- The zucchini does not need to be peeled.
- Do not squeeze the moisture out of the zucchini.
- It is important that the cookies chill before baking so they don’t spread too much.
- Cookie dough can be prepared and refrigerated for 24 hours before baking.
- Store the cookies in the fridge or at room temperature for 3-4 days.
More Baking with Zucchini
- Zucchini Muffins – freezer friendly
- Pumpkin Zucchini Bread – moist & delicious
- Zucchini Cake – totally irresistible
- Zucchini Brownies – with 1 minute frosting
- Chocolate Chip Zucchini Banana Bread – perfect for an afternoon treat
Did you love these Zucchini Cookies? Be sure to leave a rating and a comment below!
Moist Zucchini Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
Cookies
- ½ cup unsalted butter softened
- ½ cup light brown sugar packed
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 1 cup finely grated zucchini
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
Frosting
- 16 ounces cream cheese softened
- 4 ½ cups powdered sugar
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
- ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Cream butter, brown sugar, and sugar with a mixer on medium low speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute.
- Add egg and grated zucchini just until combined.
- Whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients a little bit at a time just until combined. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 2 hours (or up to 24 hours).
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Use a medium cookie scoop (about 1 ½ tablespoons) placing the dough 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet.
- Bake cookies 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned and the tops spring back when touched.
- Allow to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Add cream cheese and salt to a large bowl and mix with a mixer on medium until smooth and fluffy.
- Alternate adding powdered sugar and heavy cream a little bit at a time beating after each addition.
- Once incorporated, beat on high speed for 1 to 2 minutes until silky smooth. Add more powdered sugar if needed to reach desired consistency.
- Spread the frosting over the tops of the cooled cookies.
Notes
- Zucchini does not need to be peeled. Use the fine size of a box grater to shred the zucchini.
- You do not need to squeeze the zucchini after grating.
- Do not skip the chilling step or the cookies will spread too much.
- These cookies are soft and cake-like as the zucchini adds moisture.
- We love these with cream cheese frosting but chocolate frosting is great too.
- These will keep for 3 to 4 days in an air-tight container at room temperature. If it is very warm, store them in the fridge.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Cookies, Dessert, Snack
Cuisine American© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
so moist and simple to make!
Hello- how would you freeze?
Hi Renee, I would freeze them after baking, once completely cooled. I would leave off the icing until ready to enjoy!
Hi Holly, I made these on 28 Aug 2021, and they are excellent! Worthy of 10 stars without the frosting :) My family loved these. I have a load of zucchini, so every time I made some bread I will make a batch of these as well, they are that good. I followed the recipe exactly and added 1/c cup of raisins, perfect cookies.
Yay! So happy to hear your family loved them, Lee. Such a tasty way to use up some of those zucchini!
I had leftover zucchini in my refrigerator and was looking for a fun recipe to use it in.
I came across your zucchini cookie recipe and decided to try it. The recipe is really simple and easy, which I appreciate, and the cookies came out great. I didn’t frost them because we are in the middle of a snowstorm and i didn’t have cream cheese on hand. They are delicious without but I’ll be sure to frost next time I make these.
So happy you enjoyed this recipe, Laurie. We love using extra zucchini for this recipe! It’s so delicious.
Can these cookies be made with summer squash too, My neighbor just gave me some and would like to try
Hi Angie, we haven’t tried this recipe with summer squash but I think it should work well! Let us know how they turn out for you.
Holly, on the Zucchini cookie recipe, do I use the really fine grater (like I would for Romano cheese) to grate the zucchini?
Hi Terry, that should work. You do want the zucchini finely grated so it mixes better into your batter.