Baked Zucchini Pancakes with Cheese: Oven Recipe Without Oil
Oven-baked zucchini pancakes are a surprisingly simple and tasty dish. Unlike fritters, they are made without any vegetable oil, just hard or semi-hard cheese, which keeps them soft and gives them a lovely flavor. Depending on whether you add baking powder to the batter, you can make them thin or fluffy, whichever you prefer.
The finished pancakes can be served right away, sprinkled with herbs, with sour cream or sliced fresh vegetables. Or, if you feel like it, stack them into a pancake cake, layering them with grated cheese, pâté or various sandwich spreads. There is very little hands-on work in making the batter, so you can cook this dish for breakfast even when you are rushing off to work.
Ingredients
4 servings
- Young zucchini 0.8-1 kg
- Eggs 2-3
- Semi-hard cheese 100 g
- All-purpose flour 2-3 tbsp
- Baking powder as needed
- Salt, black pepper, paprika to taste
Pickles to serve with
Step-by-step recipe
- Zucchini pancakes are very soft and tender, so the zucchini for this dish should be young, with a nice, unblemished green skin and no fully formed seeds. It is best to use farm eggs with dark yolks, then the pancakes will have a beautiful color. Take a semi-hard cheese that can be grated, Gouda or Emmental will do. By the way, you can also find reduced-fat cheeses in stores.
- Wash and dry the young zucchini. Get out a large deep bowl and a coarse grater. Trim the ends of the zucchini, then carefully grate them into the bowl. The shreds come out quite large, so almost no liquid is released. Add the eggs to the grated zucchini; if there is hardly any liquid, two are enough. Season with salt and pepper, add 0.5 tsp of sweet paprika and 2 tbsp of flour.
- Whisk the mixture so the ingredients are evenly distributed. If you want fluffy zucchini pancakes, add a third of a packet of baking powder; a packet is the usual amount for 3 cups of flour, so this will be plenty. Finely grate the cheese. Mix again with the same whisk. The batter should be thick, like for potato pancakes. If your batter turns out too runny, add one more egg and some flour.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spoon the batter onto the baking sheet in rounds 8-10 cm in diameter. A cooking ring of the right size makes this very easy. The layer should be 5-6 mm thick. If a little liquid seeps out, that's fine, you can blot it with a paper towel.
- Put the baking sheet in the oven. At this temperature the pancakes are usually ready in 15-20 mins. They come off the paper very easily, don't tear and are slightly springy. By the way, don't fry this batter in a skillet: the cheese will most likely melt and burn, and the dish will be ruined. Transfer the finished pancakes to a plate. If you used baking powder, they will rise and become fluffy.
- To serve, sprinkle the pancakes with finely chopped herbs: green onion, cilantro, parsley, arugula leaves. Add sliced fresh cucumber and tomato as well. Serve the dish warm or hot. Once cooled, the pancakes can be layered with a filling and baked to make a small pancake cake.
Yield: 4 servings Calories: 80 kcal per 100 g Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 30 mins Category: Main Dishes › Vegetables and Mushrooms Cuisine: Italian cuisine Rating: