Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins

Zucchini! You may have read my last recipe on the blog for zucchini cake whoopie pies with a maple buttercream filling. Well guess what? After making those whoopie pies, I STILL had zucchini left over! This guy was big:

So what to do, what to do? Keep baking, of course! This time it was muffins. I adapted this recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Best of Cooking Light, that I've had for several years now. It was a very moist, flavorful muffin. The combo of zucchini and chocolate was excellent! If you have any lingering zucchini from your garden or CSA this summer, I suggest you try these.

Ingredients:

-2 and 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

-3/4 cup sugar

-2 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1 cup finely shredded zucchini

-1/2 cup 1% milk

-1/4 cup vegetable oil

-1 large egg

-3/4 to 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners, or grease a 8 x 4 loaf pan if you'd like to make this recipe into bread instead of muffins. Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups. Combine the flour and the next six ingredients in a large bowl, and make a well in the center of the mixture. Combine the zucchini, milk, oil, and egg in a bowl, and add to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined.

Spoon batter into your muffin cups or loaf pan. For muffins, bake at 350 degrees for 12 - 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. For the loaf, bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool in pan for 5 to 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on cooling rack.

ENJOY!

I made two mini loaves too!

What here doesn't belong?! Haha. I made homemade pizza with zucchini as one of the toppings the night after making the muffins. :)

Have a great week, friends! By the way, my favorite season fall is almost officially here... I cannot wait for all the flavors of fall! I've been dreaming of them for a while...like since July. Okay fine, I'll be honest. I've been dreaming of fall flavors since the end of last fall. ;-)

Zucchini Cake Whoopie Pies with Maple Buttercream Filling

Zucchini cake whoopie pies? Who thinks up such a thing? I do! What made me think of this? Well, you see, I recently received this fun whoopie pies cookbook for my birthday, and I wanted to try one of the recipes in it.

In the book, I saw a recipe for carrot cake whoopie pies that sounded awesome. However, I was in possession of this huge zucchini:

And I felt the need to bake with it! So, I decided to try substituting shredded zucchini for the carrots. Success! The zucchini cake cookies were awesome. 

Then I had to decide which type of filling to use for the whoopie pies. Some kind of cream cheese filling? Chocolate? Actually, thinking back, chocolate probably would have worked quite well with zucchini. What I settled on though was a very tasty maple buttercream filling recipe that was also from the whoopie pies cookbook. Score! A great, unique combo was born.

Ingredients:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 and 1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-2 large eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup grated zucchini

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. 

In a stand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add the eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Mix in the flour mixture until just combined, then add the zucchini. Chill the batter in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour (I chilled mine overnight because I wasn't making the cookies until the next day).

Drop about 1 to 2 tablespoons of batter at a time onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when pressed gently. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool on sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

For the maple buttercream filling:

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-2 cups confectioners' sugar

-1 Tbsp. milk

-2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

In a stand mixer, beat the butter on low speed until creamy. Add the sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, with the mixer on low until incorporated. Add the milk and maple syrup, and beat on medium for 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl periodically.

Match up cookies of roughly the same size, top one with a generous amount of maple filling, and put the two cookies together. Bam! You've got yourself a delicious (and somewhat healthy, perhaps?? ;-)) whoopie pie. This recipe made about 36 cookies for me...so about 18 whoopie pies.

You'll want to store these cookies in the fridge, and be sure not to stack them on top of one another because they'll stick together. I put mine in tupperware containers, and each layer of whoopie pies was separated by wax paper.

The cookies were a tad flatter than I would have liked, but the flavor was great and they were very cake-like so I was still happy with them.

Hi there little green specks of zucchini! Love that you can see those.

Mmmmm, time for filling. :)

I also made zucchini chocolate chip muffins with that beautiful, huge zucchini, so hopefully that recipe will appear here on the blog soon!

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Zucchini Muffins

This morning I made zucchini muffins. I used this particular recipe a couple weeks ago to make zucchini bread to bring to my boyfriend's family's house for Thanksgiving. This time I decided to make muffins since they take less time to bake! I completely forgot to take pictures along the way though...it was only after they were all done did I remember my recent inspiration to begin a blog. Oops! From now on, I hope to remember to take pictures of my baking adventures from start to finish. The muffins turned out very well. I altered the original recipe a bit...the recipe I followed today is below. I'll share with you Megan and Mike's comments about the muffins: Megan: "Mmmm, they are moist." Mike: "They are good. Very chocolatey." So there you have it! I like the way the shredded zucchini looks in this picture. It makes the muffin look rather Christmas-y! I also used fun Christmas muffin liners. Oh, and another point of note...the last time I made this recipe (into bread), I think it tasted even more moist a day or two after I baked it. Also, a nice thing about this recipe is that it does not require an electric mixer. It can all be done by hand! It's quick and easy, with simple clean-up. Yay!

Yield: 2 loaves or approximately 24 muffins

3 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup light yogurt (I used Dannon light n’ fit vanilla)

1 3/4 cups sugar

3 cups grated zucchini

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I added these to only half the batter)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pan with paper liners. Grease AND flour (the flouring is important for this recipe!) two 8×4 inch loaf pans, liberally.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk. Mix in oil and sugar, then zucchini and vanilla. Combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, baking soda, baking powder and salt, as well as chocolate chips. Stir this into the egg mixture. Divide the batter into muffin cups or prepared pans.

Bake muffins for 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. Bake loaves for approximately 60 minutes, give or take 10 minutes. Immediately remove muffins from pans and cool on rack. Leave loaves in the pans for10-15 minutes before removing to rack to cool.

ENJOY!!