Growing up, my mom used to make these zucchini chocolate chip cookies that my friends couldn’t help commenting on. “Zucchini? In a cookie?!” It had turned me off at first too. In my mind, vegetables and sweets did not belong in the same sentence, let alone the same mixing bowl. Then I tried them. You couldn’t taste the zucchini at all, and the cookies turned out so light, puffy, and sweet that I couldn’t help but grudgingly eat my greens, much as I hated to prove my mother right. (“Just try them! You’ll like them!”)
Now that I’m all adult and cooking my own food, I find myself in the strange position of actually trying to eat vegetables at every meal. (“Who even are you?” whispers my horrified high school self.) I don’t go for a lot of sweets because I have trouble eating just one cookie when the entire rest of the tin is in front of me, but when I do, it’s nice if they can follow the same veggie-filled pattern, giving me a little extra bang for my nutritional buck. Especially because, as my high school friends refused to understand, with the right ingredients, your veggie-packed sweets won’t taste like spinach, carrot, or zucchini at all. So, at that point, why not put them in? Case in point: here are 12 interesting, tasty, and (obviously) sweet recipes that should get even the most veggie-averse eaters excited.