One of the things that I miss about living close to my parents is having access to my mom’s garden.  She plants a fairly good-sized garden every year, with corn, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, etc.  One of my favorite times of the summer is when the zucchini are ready to be picked and used in multiple recipes.  Although the best size for eating is usually when the zucchini reach about 6-8 inches in length, the zucchini at home often continued to grow much larger before it was used.  So, we liked used it for dessert recipes, because we had so much!

One of my favorite ways to use zucchini is in the Chocolate Zucchini Sheet Cake recipe.  This recipe was first published over 20 years ago, and I think we’ve been making it for almost that long!  It’s great for taking to picnics or potluck dinners.  And even better, it’s chocolate, plus a vegetable – you can’t go wrong with that

I love Texas sheet cake. When it’s zucchini time, I make this recipe, which resembles Texas sheet cake. What a sweet way to use zucchini from the garden!

Of course, zucchini is great when used for dinner, too.  When I was in college, I ended up with some zucchini that someone gave to my roommates, and because I was the culinary arts major out of the group, I was given the task of finding something to make with it!  I came across this Zucchini Lasagna recipe, so we tried it.  What makes this lasagna unique is that the noodles are replaced by slices of zucchini.  It’s quite tasty, and a great way to use up a lot of zucchini.

I plant zucchini every year, and we always seem to have more than we can use! This recipe is a particularly delicious way to use our abundant crop.

Growing up, we tried a lot of different zucchini recipes, from cookies, to bread, to fried zucchini and more.  There are 1,164 recipes that come up in my search results on www.tasteofhome.com, but to help you decide what to make, you can also find the top 10 recipes here.  What are some of your favorite ways to use zucchini?