Pineapple (Zucchini) Cookies

We visited friends recently who gave us a gigantic zucchini.  Huge.  I should have weighed it. Anyway, we love zucchini and our plant stopped producing about a month ago, so this was a welcome gift.  I removed the seeds and then shredded all the flesh and put it in several huge ziplock bags.  We ate sauteed zucchini.  I made Crustless Zucchini Quiche and Zucchini Enchiladas.  Steve made his famous Zucchini Soup.  This hardly made a dent in the supply.  So I dug out this:     

It belonged to my grandmother, an avid gardener and wonderful cook.  Those are the bookmarks she put in it, decades ago.  The book is stained and full of handwritten notes.  

 

There was a bookmark at Pineapple Cookies, but no stains and no notes.  I don't know if she ever made them or just intended to.

I decided to make them.  That minute.  Fortunately, I keep most baking ingredients on hand at all times.  However, this recipe had some tricky items.  I don't cook with margarine, don't keep wheat germ on hand, and have never seen pineapple extract for sale (though I'm going to keep an eye out for it now).  I made the following changes to the recipe:

• I used butter instead of margarine.
• I replaced all but 1 T. of the oil with crushed pineapple.
• I used extra pineapple juice in place of the pineapple extract.
• I replaced the wheat germ with whole wheat flour.
• I refrigerated the dough for 2 days instead of 20 minutes. 
• I didn't grease the cookie sheets.

Boy, when I write it all out like that, it's a wonder they turned out!  But they did turn out.  They were delicious!

There was no zucchini taste.  The pineapple was subtle; the extract certainly would have helped in that sense.  The cookies had a deep brown sugar taste and a soft cake-like texture.  

After making the cookies, I still had about 7 cups of shredded zucchini left.  Tomorrow I'll share what I made to use up the entire 7 cups.  I bet you'll NEVER guess...