Growing up, my mother used to send me to school with a lunchbox full of healthy snacks to sustain me throughout the day. Not much has changed when it comes to my eating habits except now, I’m packing my own snacks. Okay, so I have discovered some new foods and expanded my tastes since middle school but these chocolate chip zucchini bread muffins have been a favorite of mine for years!
These savory muffins are the perfect afternoon pick-me-up. With a crunchy exterior, and moist inside full of deep flavors from the cinnamon and the zucchini, these muffins are a crowd-pleaser. Plus you can use the recipe to bake it up as a loaf or as muffins, but I’m always partial to muffins because they are easier to transport and share…when I can bring myself to share these.
When I moved away for college and started making my own meals, I quickly realized that I would need to figure out how to make zucchini bread muffins. I just couldn’t wait for my next trip home to get my fix! Luckily for me they are really quite easy to make because college Charlotte was not as comfortable in the kitchen as I am today. Honestly I was lucky if I got a basic pasta dish on my plate without something breaking (glass jars in the kitchen were my downfall), burning or just failing entirely.
These muffins are an adaptation from my mother’s zucchini bread recipe which can be found in her cookbook, EATS: Enjoy All The Seconds. If you’ve read the book, you’ve probably seen the shoutout I get alongside the recipe on page 49. Let’s be real, if I was going to get a shoutout in print it was inevitably going to be food related.
A tip for Baking with Zucchini
One thing to remember when cooking with zucchini is to remove all of the water before throwing it into the batter. I really can’t stress that enough. Grating zucchini produces a ton of water and if you don’t remove it, the batter will be too soggy and the recipe will not turn out right. I’ve seen some recipes that call you for you to not remove the moisture but this isn’t one of them.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup grated zucchini (from ~3 large zucchinis)
- 3 large eggs
- 1 cup (200g) sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups (250g) flour
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoons baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a muffin tin with liners and set aside.
- Grate zucchinis and remove all of the moisture from the grated vegetable and set aside.
- Beat eggs until frothy in a large bowl. Mix in sugar, oil and vanilla extract until thick and lemon-colored. Stir in the grated zucchini.
- In a medium bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Fold dry ingredients into wet ones.
- Divide batter into prepared muffin tins. Fill each muffin slot just over 3/4 of the way full.
- Bake for 20-25 min and let cool for 5 min in pan before moving muffins to cooling rack
Note: Want to make bread or bunt cake rather than muffins? Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean
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