The Pinterest Challenge: Oven Baked Zucchini Chips

Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know what Pinterest is. If not, click on that little link and go waste spend hours of your life looking through it. Pinterest is a place where you can "pin" any picture on the internet that you like and it will save the picture and link to the original site for you. Pretty cool, except that you end up with pictures of homes you'll never really own, clothes you'll never really wear, stuff you'll never really make and food you'll never really eat.

Enter... the Pinterest challenge.

This was a challenge first described on Young House Love as a way to actually do something with all of those pins. The whole challenge is described better here.

Most of the people doing the challenge are doing DIY crafty stuff. I wasn't feeling the craftiness so I went with something I'm more comfortable with... FOOD. Here's the inspiration picture:

Source: cinnamonspiceandeverythingnice.com via Krista on Pinterest

Yum. Don't those look delicious? Last night I had everything I needed on hand, so I decided to go for it. The recipe can be found here and aside from a few little modifications (I used milk and eggs to dip the zucchini in and we used Ranch dressing instead of a basil dipping sauce because we're classy like that) I pretty much followed it exactly. It's not rocket science. Here's my set up:

The zucchini is dipped into the milk and egg mixture (some people do egg whites only but I used the whole egg... love me some yolk) and then coated with breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. You are supposed to use Panko breadcrumbs but I didn't have any of those so regular breadcrumbs worked just fine. Once you get the breadcrumbs coated put them on a wire rack and then set on top of a baking sheet. The over should be preheated to 400 and then bake for 30-35 minutes. If you don't have a wire rack just put them on a greased baking sheet and flip half way though. Here's what they look like when they come out of the oven: 

They were delicious. Crispy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside. We dipped them in ranch and they reminded me of a healthier fried pickle. I got Brandon's seal of approval so I will most definitely be making these again!

Side note: see that fruity thing in the background of the last picture? That's fruit cobbler that I was making for dessert (it's not done yet, just waiting to go in the oven. When it came out it had a beautiful golden brown buttery crust). I should have realized that Brandon would be resistant to something called "cobbler" since he is a Yankee. It took a fight to get him to actually TRY it, but in the end I think I won him over. I wouldn't say it's his favorite thing ever, but I don't think he'll turn his nose up at it again.