These were a pleasant surprise tonight! While I’ve never made anything quite like this before, I mainly just wanted to use up some zucchini that I had frozen last fall (see “What To Do With Zucchini“). We are attempting a No Spend Challenge for the month of February, with the intent to use a lot of the food currently taking up space in our pantry and freezer.
The hint of cloves/cinnamon make this recipe work very well! This is definitely a keeper. If muffins aren’t your preference, this would also make a good chocolate zucchini loaf, or bundt cake. Just increase the cooking time to ~55 minutes.
This was a new (to me) recipe, slightly modified to suit the ingredients I had (and didn’t). I actually didn’t have any honey on hand, so (right or wrong) I substituted a mix of white sugar and water. I’ve also been experimenting recently trying to substitute palm sugar in place of brown sugar, just for kicks- I will say I think it worked here.
PREP TIME: 15 min COOK TIME: 40 min TOTAL TIME: 55 min YIELD: 8
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1/2 cup of plain or vanilla yogurt
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1/2 cup of brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup buttermilk (or mix 3/4 tsp of white vinegar with regular milk, and allow 3-5 minutes to sour)
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 2 cups approx shredded zucchini (if frozen, be sure to thaw and drain excess liquid)
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
- In large bowl combine oil, yogurt, honey, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and buttermilk and mix until well blended.
- In separate bowl, combine remaining dry ingredients and mix well.
- Add dry ingredient mixture gradually to wet ingredients, mix.
- Fold in zucchini and chocolate chips until just combined.
- Pour into greased muffin tins, bake 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of muffins comes out clean.