Chocolate zucchini muffins

As my last post may have conveyed, we had a lot of fun camping on the weekend. As my first time sleeping in a 'normal' tent (versus a shared open-ended hootchie on the traumatic experience that was year 8 camp, and a smaller hootchie on the enjoyable but short-lived Duke of Edinburgh year 10 camp), it was also a novel experience for me. I still have some reservations; I loved sleeping amongst trees, but was less enamored with the bugs, and I loved walking for 5 hours on the Cape to Cape track, but would have liked a shower at the end of it! However, I can definitely imagine more camping in my future.

After leaving work early on Friday and returning home on Sunday to the usual weekend requirements (shopping/washing/ironing...), I am also thanking myself again for bulk baking muffins last weekend. A few posts ago, I shared the pumpkin, apple and cranberry variety. Today, we have chocolate zucchini.

It was actually a little embarrassing not to have a chocolate zucchini muffin recipe on this blog. Given my penchant for vegetable-containing desserts, and the many baked goods I've made with zucchini, chocolate zucchini was a glaring omission. I'm pleased to be able to fill it today.

I made these by adapting my apple and zucchini muffins. The apple and zucchini recipe yields 16 muffins, and as I only had 1 small zucchini available, I halved the ingredients to give just 8 muffins here. You could easily double things again to give a bigger batch.

When I ate a muffin straight from the oven, I was worried I might have under-cooked these. The middle was almost too moist and gooey. After cooling, however, they were perfect. I have added a few minutes onto my recommended baking time, but these may be an example of patience being a virtue. In other words, eat them once cool!

Chocolate zucchini muffins

Vegan

Makes 8 small muffins

Print recipe

Ingredients

1 cup self-raising flour

1/4 cup cocoa

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tbsp chia seeds soaked for ~15 minutes in 1/4 cup water

1/3 cup almond milk (or milk of choice)

3 tbsp apple sauce

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 small zucchini, grated

Method

Preheat your oven to 180'C and prepare 8 muffin pans.

Combine the flour, cocoa and sugar in a large bowl. Add the soaked chia seeds, milk, apple sauce, vegetable oil and vanilla, and stir until fully combined.

Add the grated zucchini to the muffin batter and stir to incorporate. 

Spoon into muffin tins and bake for 20 - 22 minutes.

Allow to cool before eating. Store in the refrigerator.

Even if you haven't gone camping recently, I can recommend these as an ideal mid-week treat to pull out of your freezer. For that matter, if you haven't gone camping recently, you may be even more in need of such a treat! Conclusion: these are muffins for all of us, at any time.

Submitted to Healthy Vegan Friday #69.

Do you bake with zucchini? I seem to do so semi-regularly!

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