“Your body is not your masterpiece, your life is.”
Happy Spring, my friends!!
So, I have a very similar recipe here, which is my chocolate zucchini cake covered in a match glaze (YUM!), but I wanted to make this slightly more kid-friendly! As Oliver is almost 13 months (what the heck!!??), I will happily admit that he has already consumed a little bit of chocolate—no shame here! That being said, we are trying to make sure we never sugar-overload with him, and the only sugar he generally has is from natural sources, like fruit. Of course, most of my baked goods have at least a touch of sugar, and these zucchini muffins are no different! In the 9 large muffins that I made, there is only ¾ cup of sugar, which is 12 tablespoons total, or 1 TBL + 1 tsp per muffin (I think!!). All in all, Oliver’s sugar intake per muffin is small, seeing as he doesn’t even eat ½ a muffin at a time!
Woo, that was a lot of quick math there. Anyways! If you check out the chocolate zucchini cake recipe that I did YEARS ago, you’ll see why I’m obsessed with adding zucchini to a recipe like this—aside from the childhood memory of it, it adds an extra amount of moisture, some vegetable intake, all things I’m here for, especially with a little one! Oliver has been devouring these in the morning with his breakfast, and it makes my heart SO happy! Of course, this kid is going to (hopefully) love baked goods, but if we can also teach him the importance of fruits and vegetables along the way, my job will be done!
I had Oliver help me in making these, and aside from sneaking a taste of the butter, which he wasn’t a fan of, he did tremendously! He helped mix and fold, which I was so pleased with. Then, it was time to put some chocolate chips on top of a few of them, so I showed him how to do it, thinking he would follow my lead, but he ended up just taking a handful of the chocolate chips and putting them directly into his mouth. Of course, why was I surprised?! Regardless, it was a wonderful first little baking adventure together, even if he had maybe 10 mini chips, who cares! These are perfect for kids, for adults, for breakfast, for a snack, we can’t get enough in our house and hope that you experiment with adding some veggies to your morning muffins, too!
ingredients
Butter—6 oz, or 1 ½ sticks
Brown Sugar—5.25 oz, or ¾ C
Eggs—3
Vanilla Extract—2 tsp
Flour—13.75 oz, or 2 ¾ C
Baking Powder—2 ½ tsp
Baking Soda—1 ½ tsp
Salt—1 tsp
Cinnamon—2 tsp
(Oat) Milk—4 oz, or ½ C
Zucchini, shredded—16.5 oz, or 2 C
Chocolate Chips (Optional)—to sprinkle on top
process
Preheat your oven to 350˚F
In the bowl of your mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth
Add in the eggs, one at a time, and mix until combined; add in vanilla extract
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon
With the mixer on low, slowly pour in about ½ of the dry mixture, then ½ of the milk; scrape down the bowl
Add the remainder of the dry mixture and milk; mix until just combined
Fold in the shredded zucchini
Spray your muffin pan with nonstick spray (we used large muffin pans, so this recipe made 9 muffins)
Fill each cup up about ¾ of the way full
Optional—sprinkle chocolate chips on the tops of the muffins
Bake in the oven for 18 minutes, rotate, 15 minutes
This time was for large muffins, so if you are doing smaller muffins, start with 10 minutes, rotate, 10 minutes
When the muffins spring back slightly when touched, remove from the oven and allow to cool before taking them out of the pan
Bon Appétit!