Tasty baked zucchini fritters with a twist. The fritter is wrapped in a gorgeous zucchini flower! With sweet potato, cheese, and pine nuts added for extra flavour and crunch.
To say that I love cooking with zucchini flowers is probably a little bit of an understatement. I mean why wouldn't you? They are so pretty and brighten up your day.
My favourite way to cook zucchini flowers is stuffing and frying them. As delicious as this is, it isn't the healthiest way of eating them on a regular basis. Hence a healthier way, baked zucchini fritters.
What's in this post
Ingredients
- Zucchini Flowers: Use female flowers which have baby zucchinis attached. Often you can find the male flowers which are cheaper (just flower, no zucchini). Use these and buy a zucchini for the filling.
- Onion: Use a brown or yellow onion, dice as finely as you can.
- Sweet Potato: You could use pumpkin as an alternative.
- Cheddar Cheese: Other hard or semi hard cheeses can be substituted.
- Pine Nuts: Add a buttery note, but can be swapped out for almonds.
- Rosemary Leaves: I use fresh, but dried can be substituted.
Wrapping the fritters
Normally stuffing zucchini flowers can be a pain in the rear. But using them is a breeze for the wrapping of the baked zucchini fritters.
Under normal circumstances you try not to rip the flower, but in this case ripping is a necessity.
Gently tease the flower apart into four sections (as below). Remove the centre (stamen) of the flower. Place a decent tablespoon of fritter mixture in the centre of the flower and wrap. It's as easy as that!
Get the kids involved!
This is a perfect recipe to get the kids involved with or let them take ownership of. Cook the onion and sweet potato in advance, leave them to cool. Prep all the other ingredients that require a knife (if they are old enough to wield a knife let them go for it) and hand over the ingredients to your young one.
Let them mix all the ingredients up and make the fritters. It is quite suited to small fingers, as you are folding the flower around a nice big blog of sweet potato mixture, so simple to assemble. I think the less perfect and more rustic these baked zucchini fritters look the better.
Sara xxx
Printable Recipe
Baked Zucchini Fritters
Ingredients
- 16 zucchini flowers (female with baby zucchini attached)
- 1 onion medium diced, sautéed until tender and caramelized
- 350 g sweet potato cooked and mashed
- 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
- ¼ cup pine nuts toasted
- 1 tablespoon rosemary leaves finely chopped
- salt & pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 180 deg C (360 deg F).
- Separate flowers from the baby zucchinis. Finely chop the zucchinis and place in a medium bowl.
- To the bowl add sautéed onion, mashed sweet potato, grated cheese, toasted pine nuts and rosemary. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Open up the zucchini flowers, this will require tearing down the sides of the flower. You want a flat open flower.
- Place a decent tablespoon, or two, of sweet potato mixture in the centre of the flattened zucchini flower. The amount of mixture you use for each flower depends on how big your flowers are. Fold the petals up and around the mixture to form your fritter. The flower isn’t meant to encase the mixture completely, you should still see mixture between the petals. Repeat with the remaining flowers.
- Place fritters in a baking dish which has been lined with baking paper. Drizzle fritters with olive oil and sprinkle with a little extra salt. Bake in the oven at 180 deg C (360 deg F) for 30 minutes and fritters are golden.
- Perfect as an accompaniment to a baked dinner.
Oven Temperatures
All oven temperatures are fan forced.
Measurement Notes
All measurements are Australian metric standard. All measures are level, and cups are lightly packed unless specified. 1 teaspoon = 5ml / 1 tablespoon = 20mls / 1 cup = 250ml /4 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon.
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
The recipe's nutritional information is an approximation based on an online calculator. It is meant solely for reference purposes. If you're looking for precise details, be sure to double-check with your own research.
Cathy Mcconnaughey
Definitely yummy and love that it’s not fried!
Martine @ Chompchomp
Wow Sara these look incredible. Love your creativity, they look so interesting better still GF!
milkteaxx
ive seen these at my local grocer but have never had theguts to attempt these, you make it look so easy!
Katriina @ FinSki's
I have yet to try my hand at zucchini flowers so I'm really excited to try these. Always looking for interesting vegetarian recipes, Thanks!
Katherine
I like Zucchini Flowers and always open to trying them in different ways. They look amazing Sara.
Sara
I am a big zucchini flower fan as well, absolutely love playing with them.
Isadora @ she likes food
These are beautiful and sound so delicious! I've been wanting to try squash blossoms stuffed with cheese for a while now, but these ones sound so much better. I also really love the fact that you baked them instead of deep frying them! As soon as I can get my hands on some squash blossoms I will try these 🙂
Sara
I do love these stuffed with cheese I will admit, but this is a great alternative. Let me know how you go if you do try them out 🙂
john | heneedsfood
Great flavour combo. Especially with the rosemary and sweet potato. Yum!
Sara
Thanks John! I was really happy with the way they worked out.