Every year we plant zucchinis in our veggie patch – no real surprises there. But every year we say “Just one plant.” Because experience has taught us not to plant six plants. No no no, we are generally drowning in giant zucchinis every year, with just the one plant.
I generally make all of the zucchini things come late Summer/early Autumn when the zucchini glut really kicks in: zucchini fritters, zucchini slice, zucchini relish, and these choc zucchini muffins. And my children generally turn their noses up at zucchini… but they’ll eat these things! Suckers.
These muffins only have a very slight tinge of green fleck through them (you could peel the darker skin of the zucchini to eradicate this if you’ve got a real fuss pot!) They are moorish and moist and an overall crowd pleaser here, Husband is a big fan and often requests them. The best bit: they use up a whole 500g of zucchini, and when you’ve got kilo’s and kilo’s of those suckers, that’s a winner.
Hidden Zucchini Choc Muffins (Egg Free Too!)
Ingredients
- 500g zucchini
- 100g oil (usually I use vegetable or rice bran)
- 180g sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla essence
- 270g self-raising flour
- 50g cocoa
Method
- I use my Thermomix, but you can use a food processor, or grate by hand (although the longer ‘strands’ of zucchini will be harder to hide, if hidden veg is the aim of your game) to chop the zucchini along with the oil and sugar and vanilla, all together. I find if you chop the zucchini with the oil and sugar (and vanilla) you won’t end up with too much of a mush situation. You do want to chop it until it looks like this:
- Yup. Zucchini vomit. Yum. (Sorry…) To this mixture basically fold in the flour and cocoa until you’ve got a good muffin dollop-y consistency. It’s technical, huh?!
- Scoop into muffin tins and bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
The moisture from the zucchini does the binding, and makes these muffins springy and light. We aren’t usually an egg free kind of family – we don’t have kids with allergies, this year with Eleanor at school has been the only time I’ve had to adjust lunchbox packing (but even muffins with egg are ok, just not actual boiled eggs/egg sandwiches etc. Fair enough). It wasn’t until I shared this recipe with my bestie who has an egg intolerant child that she said “perfect!” that I really noted that they were egg free!
You can adjust the sugar to taste too, although the sweet factor is probably the success of what is essentially a vegetable muffin! I have used coconut sugar in these also which has been yummy, as well as adding choc chips if I’ve got some floating about.
If you’ve got a zucchini glut on your hands, like I seem to have every dang year, then this is the recipe you need to smuggle that green stuff into lunchboxes and smokos and morning teas a’plenty. I can confirm that they do freeze well also.
Eat your greens! And your choc muffins. Everyone’s a winner.
