The end of Summer is here, and if you planted zucchini in your garden – and the slugs didn’t eat it all – you may just have a plethora of zucchini lying around waiting to go bad. What to do?
Make zucchini muffins.
Well, you can make bread if you want to, but the muffins seem to last longer around here… something about counting just how many you have eaten already causes us to show some restraint!
Ingredients:
wet
- 2 cups evaporated cane sugar
- 1/2 cup turbinato sugar (think Sugar in the Raw)
- 1 cup unsweetened apple sauce
- 3 eggs (or egg replacer*)
- 2-1/2 cups grated zucchini
- 3 tsp. vanilla extract
dry
- 2 cups unbleached white flour**
- 2 cup whole wheat pastry flour**
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 3 tsp. cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 1 cup chopped nuts, dried fruit, etc – optional
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
In a large mixing bowl combine the wet ingredients, making sure to mix the eggs thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. This will be a wet dough.
If you are adding nuts or dried fruit, gently fold them in now.
Lightly grease your muffin tins, or use paper. Fill each muffin cup just over 1/2 full. We use a regular sized pan, and a mini muffin pan – the perfect size for the girls to take to school. Either way, you should get at least 2 pans worth of muffins. I usually get 15 regular muffins, and 24 mini muffins.
Bake at 325°F for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a middle muffin comes out clean.
If you are using a loaf pan, bake for 1 hour, or until the toothpick is clean. It should fill 3 greased loaf pans.
Notes:
*if you use egg replacer to make these vegan, add it with the dry ingredients. Add the water or apple juice with the wet though.
**you can use 3-1/2 cups white flour instead if you would rather, but the whole wheat adds a delicious flavor! And helps them be just a tad more healthy.
These are *healthy* to some extent, but they don’t taste it! Don’t tell your kids – or hubby – how good they are for you, just how good they are! The sugary crust that forms towards the top will make sure that they don’t believe they are healthy anyway.
I have no idea where the original recipe came from, but I have tweaked it – as usual – to suit my tastes. The girls like it this way better too – double bonus!
And did I mention that these make a tasty breakfast? Yum…