Yes, folks, it’s that time of year – the time where you have to keep your car locked at all times lest someone sneak a bag of zucchini inside, and then you’ll be stuck with what to doooooo with it. Actually, zucchini is my favorite summer squash, and I think it’s the most versatile. It’s not as seedy as crookneck squash, so you don’t have to worry about people (FRED) complaining about how many seeds there are. Also, they grow HUGE if you leave them, and all that zucchini flesh can be shredded, frozen, and thrown into casseroles, stews, and the like, year-round.

So when I wandered across this recipe at The Two Bite Club, I was all “Yes, please!”

Please note, you need a mini muffin tin for this recipe. I really and truly think that you could make fritters from this and bake them on a cookie sheet in the oven, but I haven’t done that, so I don’t have exact instructions for you. (If you give that a try, let me know how long you baked them for, and I’ll add it to this recipe.)

The ingredients:

Grated zucchini, egg, diced onion, grated sharp cheddar, dry breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. (Salt and pepper not pictured; they’re shy.)

Once you have the zucchini grated (I use my food processor to do that), put it in a clean dish towel and squeeze as much of the water out of the zucchini as you can. There’s not a picture of this, because I needed both hands to do the squeezing, and Fred wasn’t around. Also, the cats are terribly photographers. I’m sorry, kitties, but it’s true.

“Inspector Stompers would like to invite you to go eff yourself. Stompers is highly in-demand photographer and you are just jealous.”

Put all your ingredients into a bowl and mix ’em together.

Spray your mini muffin tin with cooking spray. This recipe makes 12-ish tots, but I’ve gotten more and I’ve gotten fewer, so I’d recommend spraying 10 cups to start with, because you can always spray more as you need to. Or I guess you could always wipe the spray out of the tins that aren’t filled before you put it in the oven. (I just thought of that option, obviously.)

(You can tell that I bought this mini muffin tin specifically for this recipe, because it doesn’t look like crap.) Fill each cup to the top, pushing down on the filling with your spoon to compact it so they don’t fall apart when you take them out.

Bake 15 – 18 minutes in a 400ºF oven. When the top is starting to brown, they’re done.

These are really, really good, they’re easy, and they’re just as good the next day, warmed in the microwave.

I’ve made these probably 10 times since I found the recipe, and they were really good every time. One time I wasn’t paying attention, and I’d gotten it into my head that the recipe called for two cups of shredded zucchini rather than one. They still came out just fine, but they were softer, and in fact Fred prefers them made with two cups (and also, you use up more zucchini that way, yay!)