Cooking with Cucumbers

Yes, you read that correctly.. cooking with cucumbers.  If you are surrounded by cucumbers, then I may have some yummy help for you.

I tend to grow too many cucumbers.  Last year I canned over 40 jars of pickles.  The problem is that we are not big pickle eaters.  Everyone I know got pickles for Christmas and any other holiday or occasion I could think of.  I'm trying to start a new gift giving trend!  I've already harvested over twenty pounds of cucumbers this year.  I still have nine jars of pickles in the pantry from last year and just added eight new ones.

I decided it was time to look for other options to use cucumbers besides pickling!

Thanks to Google searching I discovered that you can make cucumber bread much like zucchini bread.  I decided to try making Eggless Chocolate Cucumber Banana QuickBread because I figure that everything tastes better with chocolate!

I assembled the ingredients: flour, dried cherries, vanilla, almonds, salt, sugar, olive oil, bananas, cinnamon, allspice, cucumbers and cocoa  The recipe ended up using two cucumbers, so this is probably not going to put a dent into my cucumber supply unless I eat a ton of bread!  However, friends, relatives, coworkers and neighbors may be more happy to receive bread instead of another jar of pickles!

Tip:  Use a food processor to grate the cucumber.  I didn't and would have preferred smaller pieces and less cucumber chunks in the bread.  I then mashed up the banana, mixed the rest of the ingredients, put it in the oven and waited.

Out came my first ever cucumber bread:

I honestly did not taste a drop of cucumber in the bread.  I used the Special Dark cocoa powder, which gave it a very strong chocolate flavor to mask any hint of cucumber.  It did turn out very, very moist.  Tip:  Drain the shredded cucumber to reduce the moisture.  I also wouldn't mind if it was a bit sweeter, which is probably because of the dark cocoa powder I used. 

Overall, this was a delightfully different way to eat garden fresh cucumbers!  Do you have delightfully different ways to use cucumbers?  If so, I would really like some suggestions before I get buried in pickles, again!

Shared on the Homestead Hop.