Zucchini Cobbler

One zucchini plant produces so many squash that gardeners regularly seek new ways to use up their harvest. Even people who don’t garden know the jokes (or truth) about zucchini showing up randomly on porches and in mailboxes. After you’ve run through all the savory easy zucchini recipes, zucchini cobbler provides a sweet way to use the vegetable. It’s an easy dessert you might not realize contains summer squash.

Cooking the zucchini with lemon juice, sugar and spices makes the filling resemble apples in taste and texture. It’s sandwiched between a sweet, pie-like crust that turns crisp and brown in the oven. Serve it unnamed at a potluck or after dinner, and people are unlikely to pick out zucchini as the main ingredient.

Although it’s called a cobbler, this recipe lacks the biscuity, cobblestone-like topping that typically distinguishes cobblers from crumbles and crisps. Cut it into squares as you would cut dessert bars and serve each bar warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, plus a drizzle of salted caramel sauce, if you have a sweet tooth.

Ingredients for Zucchini Cobbler

• Zucchini: This recipe calls for peeled and seeded zucchini. While you don’t need to peel zucchini for most recipes, the extra prep here ensures that the chopped zucchini cooks into a tender filling unmarred by chewy seeds and tough bits of skin.
• Lemon juice: Lemon juice gives the zucchini filling an acidic bite reminiscent of Granny Smiths, some of the best apples for apple crisp and other baked treats. The recipe’s large amount of lemon juice is key to making the zucchini seem like apples in the dessert.
• Sugar: Sugar makes the vegetable taste more like it belongs in a dessert than in a savory entree. Unlike some other types of sugar, the neutral taste of granulated sugar doesn’t overpower the mild flavor of the zucchini.
• Spices: Ground cinnamon and nutmeg are standard spices in apple desserts, so they add to the zucchini-as-apples illusion in this recipe. Spices do not expire like perishable foods, but they lose their flavor over time, so check that your cinnamon and nutmeg are still fresh and aromatic.
• Crust: Sandwich the zucchini filling between a sweet, crumbly crust made of all-purpose flour, sugar, butter and more cinnamon. Fridge-cold butter creates a tender crust when making classic butter pie pastry, and it’s important here for the same reason. If you use unsalted butter, mix 1/2 teaspoon salt into the crust.

Directions

Step 1: Cook the zucchini

Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a large saucepan over medium-low heat, cook and stir the zucchini and lemon juice until the zucchini is tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

Stir in the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, and cook one minute longer. Remove the zucchini mixture from the heat and set it aside.

Step 2: Make the crust

In a large bowl, combine the flour and sugar. Cut in the cold butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Stir 1/2 cup of the crust mixture into the zucchini mixture.

Step 3: Assemble the cobbler

Press half the remaining crust mixture into a greased 15x10x1-inch baking pan.

Spread the zucchini mixture over the top.

Then crumble the remaining crust mixture over the zucchini. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Editor’s Tip: Use an offset spatula to smooth the crust mixture over the zucchini layer for a tidier cobbler top.

Step 4: Bake the cobbler

Bake the cobbler until golden and bubbly, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool it in the pan on a wire rack.

Editor’s Tip: Place a large baking pan on the rack below the cobbler in the oven if you’re worried about potential overflow.

Zucchini Cobbler Variations

• Cut the sweetness: For a less sweet version of this zucchini cobbler recipe, reduce the sugar in the filling by 1/4 cup. For even lower-sugar crumb bars, reduce the sugar in the crust by 1/4 to 1/2 cup.
• Use more spices: Sprinkle a little extra cinnamon for more flavor in the filling, topping or both. Replace the cinnamon and nutmeg with homemade pumpkin pie spice to add hints of ginger and cloves.
• Add fruit and nuts: For a more textured filling, stir 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and 1/2 cup golden raisins into the zucchini mixture. Replace some zucchini with peeled and chopped Granny Smith or other baking apples for a mixed fruit cobbler. Add up to 1 cup of chopped walnuts or pecans to the crust reserved for the topping for extra crunchiness.

How to Store Zucchini Cobbler

Store zucchini cobbler in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Don’t let it sit at room temperature for more than a few hours; the crust will soften the longer it sits at room temperature.

How long does zucchini cobbler last?

Zucchini cobbler lasts up to seven days when packaged in an airtight container and refrigerated. To help these moist bars keep their shape, pack them in a single layer in their container or stack them with parchment between the layers.

Can you freeze zucchini cobbler?

You can freeze fully baked zucchini cobbler for two to three months, thaw it overnight in the refrigerator and retain much of the quality of the fresh-baked bars. The crust will soften with freezing and thawing. Or, make and freeze just the zucchini filling without any crust for a better crust texture. Let the filling thaw overnight in the fridge in a colander set over a bowl to drain away excess liquid, and then make a fresh batch of crust, assemble and bake.

Zucchini Cobbler Tips

Do you need to peel and seed the zucchini for cobbler?

If you’re using up baseball bat-size zucchini from your garden, you need to peel and seed the zucchini. Large, mature zucchini have a tough outer skin and seeds that will be unpleasantly noticeable in cobbler. To skip the peeling and seeding step, choose young, tender zucchini or other types of summer squash with thin flesh and small, soft seeds. Zucchini 8 inches long with skin that pierces easily with a fingernail doesn’t need to be peeled. They are also juicier than mature zucchini, so if your first batch of zucchini cobbler turns out a little dry, try younger zucchini next time.

Can you make this recipe for zucchini cobbler in another type of pan?

You can use another pan to bake a batch of zucchini cobbler, but you’ll need to spread it thinly to get the same surface area so the cobbler turns brown and crisp. A 13×9-inch baking pan can hold these ingredients, but the layers would be too deep to cook evenly. Instead, for a full batch of zucchini cobbler, one 9×9-inch square pan plus one 8×8-inch square pan create the best baking pan conversion for the jelly-roll pan used in this recipe. If you cut the recipe in half, you can spread it shallow enough to bake evenly in a round 10-inch springform pan, a 9×9-inch square pan or an 11×7-inch baking pan.