Do You Need To Drain Zucchini Before Baking With It?

Zucchini in sweet treats? It's a yes. Though you may not think of including the green summer squash in brownies and cake, the mildly flavored vegetable folds nicely into batter to make baked goods. You'll get an extra dose of nutrition with the added ingredient, and the pleasant taste of your moist, finished recipes may motivate you to continue folding shredded pieces into your favorite desserts. Jerrelle Guy, author of "Black Girl Baking: Wholesome Recipes Inspired by a Soulful Upbringing," artist, and recipe developer for Chocolate for Basil, gave us a few tips on how best to make some of these veggie-boosted goodies work.

Whether you're setting out to make a chocolate zucchini cake to serve as dessert to tonight's dinner guests or have your heart set on baking a zucchini apple pie recipe from scratch, you may think that squeezing out excess moisture is a necessary step before folding zucchini into the batter. Not always. "As long as there are enough structural elements in the recipe, like flour to provide gluten or protein from the eggs, you shouldn't need to drain the zucchini before adding it, although you can pat it dry after shredding it so it doesn't stick together and you can distribute it easily and evenly into the wet batter," Guy advises.

While many ingredient additions need to be accommodated for in terms of adjusting the ratio of ingredients or including an extra ingredient entirely, you most likely do not need to adjust your culinary efforts to account for moisture or unpleasant texture in zucchini-based recipes. The majority of recipes that include zucchini have already accounted for the ingredient's density and flavor to create spongy, light treats that are pleasant to bite into. Even if you are making a more savory recipe like zucchini crab cakes, simply grating the vegetable is enough.

If you decide to go rogue and add zucchini to a muffin recipe that doesn't include the item among the suggested list of ingredients, you may want to dial back other liquids to account for your creative inclusion. While you can add either puréed zucchini or shredded pieces to batters and dough, consider the end result of the treat you have in mind and adjust the textures accordingly. Spongy bread might be better served by a smoother zucchini addition, while crunchy cookies can benefit from the added lumps shredded zucchini offers.