Another zucchini recipe for you today. I was blessed with some great garden zucchini while on vacation in Indiana in July, and I wanted to make some muffins for my girls. I was definitely thinking chocolate, and I wanted to throw some oats in there too. I had a hard time finding the perfect recipe. Most chocolate zucchini muffin recipes called for yogurt or sour cream, which I wanted to avoid since my little one is allergic to dairy. The other problem I had was finding recipes that were a little too healthy, calling for flax seed, gluten-free flours, and no sugar. I wanted them somewhat healthy, but I also wanted my kids to eat them! (And I had recently had a bad experience with some super healthy blueberry oat bars that tasted horrible.) Finally I found the perfect recipe at Kelly's Cozy Kitchen. It had chocolate, zucchini, and oats, along with other "normal" muffin ingredients such as eggs, flour, and a bit of sugar to make them palatable.
Chocolate Oatmeal Zucchini Muffins
Ingredients:
2 cups zucchini, grated
¾ cup quick oats
½ cup boiling water
½ cup canola oil
3 eggs
¾ cup sugar
1½ cups flour
½ cup cocoa powder
1¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
Chocolate chips, optional
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Coat 12 muffin cups with baking spray.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the zucchini and the oats. Pour in the boiling water and mix to combine. Add the oil, eggs, and sugar and mix. Add the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Mix gently; just until the dry ingredients are barely moistened. If adding chocolate chips, do so now. Be careful not to over mix, though.
Fill the muffin cups completely full. The batter will be wet, so it’s kind of messy. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes in the muffin tin, then remove the muffins to a cooling rack.
Makes 12 muffins.
I was so confident that these muffins were winners that I went ahead and doubled the recipe the first time I made it. That was risky! (A risk that didn't pan out with the blueberry oat bars, pun intended!) I'm glad I did because my daughters wolfed these babies down!
You can see in the pic above that the little green flecks of zucchini are somewhat visible amidst all the chocolatey goodness. I shooed the girls outside while I was making them so that they wouldn't see all the zucchini that was going in there (we had been eating zucchini pretty much everyday that week and I was pretty sure they were sick of it). They did notice the green flecks, but that didn't deter them one bit from enjoying these muffins. You can reduce the visibility of the flecks by either peeling the zucchini or using a large zucchini that has a smaller skin-to-flesh ratio, but I feel like they're healthier with the skin included.
My girls gobbled these muffins down so quickly that I was afraid I wouldn't get a pic, so I stashed a gallon-sized bag full of them in the freezer for later. So the ones in the pics above were frozen and thawed. Just as good as fresh.
I only made a couple of changes to Kelly's recipe. She added 1 tbsp of coffee, but I left that out since I was making them for kids. She also called for a whole tsp of salt. I was doubling the recipe and couldn't fathom adding 2 tsp of salt, so I only did one. Even with the salt cut in half, I thought they were a tad on the salty side. So next time I think a quarter of a tsp will be fine.
You can certainly add chocolate chips to these and that would be heavenly, but since they already contained a fair amount of sugar, I skipped the chips.
These would make great Back-to-School muffins!
If you like chocolate muffins, check these out:
If you like chocolate muffins, check these out:
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