NEW WAY TO USE ZUCCHINI! Zucchini Crisp (Mock Apple) AT HOME MY WAY.

Recipes at the Top: Chit Chat at the Bottom

Zucchini Crisp (Mock Apple)

Printable View Here

Filling:

4 cups peeled, seeds removed, and sliced / diced zucchini (about 3/4 of a huge zucchini)

1/3 cup lemon juice (I used bottled lemon juice.)

2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

¼ cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Crisp Topping:

½ cup old fashioned or quick oats (I used quick oats)

¼ cup all purpose flour

½ cup light brown sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

3 Tablespoons cold butter plus more for greasing the pan

Instructions:

· Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Filling:

· Peel the zucchini, slice into smaller sections and then cut each section in half (like a half moon). Scoop out the seeds with a spoon and then slice or chop the zucchini into pieces.

· In a medium saucepan, add the zucchini pieces, lemon juice, flour, sugar, salt & cinnamon. Stir well and heat until the zucchini pieces turn clear and the mixture is bubbly and thick.

· Grease a round pie pan or 8x8 pan. (You can double the recipe and bake in a 9x13.)

Crisp topping:

· Combine the oats, flour, sugar and cinnamon. Mix well.

· Cut butter into small pieces and blend into the oat mixture. I blended mine with a pastry blender but a fork will work too. Just mix the butter into the dry mix as best as you can. Feel free to use clean fingers if you have to.

Spread across the filling in the pan.

Bake (uncovered) at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.

Let cool a few minutes before serving.

The Chit Chat

This weekend, I had two huge zucchini squash still on my counter and so while I was canning some dill relish, I tossed together this Zucchini Crisp recipe. You have GOT TO TRY IT! It's so delicious! Don't let the garden gifts go to waste! Let's find a way to use up every little thing. Here's how I made Mock Apple Crisp with Zucchini AT HOME MY WAY!

Sundays I like to make dessert to go with Sunday Dinner. This past Sunday I knew I had lots of canning to do - dill pickles and dill pickle relish. It was super hot outside and I had lots to do inside so I knew I had to get that party started. I knew I wouldn't want to cook supper after such a busy day so first thing, I put some frozen chicken in the crockpot with some salt & pepper. I turned on the crockpot to low for 8 hours. Definitely it was a crockpot to the rescue kind of day. My plan was to make:

BBQ Chicken in the Crockpot
Twice Baked Potato Casserole
Fresh corn on the cob
Garlic Bread using homemade garlic powder
Dessert TBD

Canning my dill relish/pickles went great! Canning dill pickles is one of the smells of summer for me. I love it! I had so many cucumbers! I dream about those things all winter so I really wanted to make the most of them and not let them go to waste.

After the two water bath batches were finished, I took a dip in the pool to cool down and then dressed for a trip to Walmart for some sweet corn. I don't get home in time to catch fresh corn at the local farm stands but Walmart has had some really good corn lately. At 25 cents an ear, you cannot go wrong!

Once back at home, I added some BBQ sauce to the chicken in the crockpot and stirred the pieces around so they weren't in one big blob (which was how they landed in the crockpot from the freezer).

I mixed up some instant mashed potatoes and added the remaining ingredients for Twice Baked Potato Casserole (Doug can't get enough of this stuff lately and will eat every bite leftover for days until it is completely gone!) I got that in the oven while I looked around dessert ingredients.

What for dessert? Well, I still had two HUGE zucchinis from the garden and remembered making Zucchini Cobbler once before - many years ago. It went over great but at the time, I remember thinking I might like a crisp better than a cobbler. Pinterest never fails me and I found a great recipe for Zucchini Crisp! It used the same method as my cobbler recipe for turning the zucchini into apples. To me, apples just beg for crisp topping and so I knew the mock apple filling made with zucchini would be a great combo!

This recipe turned out perfectly! My kitchen smelled just like apples and cinnamon and Doug couldn't believe the "Apple" Crisp I pulled out of the oven was actually made with zucchini! It tasted and smelled just like apples, chewed like apples and hey - actually looked just like apples too!

If you have a big old zucchini laying around, give this recipe a try! Let me know if anyone tries it and how your family liked Zucchini Crisp / Mock Apple made AT HOME MY WAY!

Here's some pics along the way!