A few years ago, when I asked my oldest daughter what dessert she wanted me to serve at her sixth birthday party, I expected her to ask for cookies or cupcakes. To my surprise, she requested chocolate zucchini bread.
There’s something unique yet comfortingly familiar about chocolate zucchini bread. It tastes like chocolate cake, yet it’s flecked with green, and the cinnamon gives it a slightly exotic flavor. I love it more than any chocolate cake I’ve ever eaten, and that’s saying a lot.
These days I tend to bake chocolate zucchini bread (and every other quick bread recipe, really) in muffin form because it cooks in less than half the time, it doesn’t heat up my house as much, and for some reason my family is much more likely to polish off a dozen muffins than a loaf of quick bread that contains the exact same number of molecules. Maybe it’s because muffins look like cute little frostingless cupcakes. Or maybe it just seems soooo much easier to grab a muffin than to unwrap a loaf of zucchini bread, cut off a slice, then wrap it back up again. We’re efficient folks around here.
Why put zucchini into your muffin batter, you might ask? It has a mild flavor, it practically disappears into the muffins when you bake it, and since zucchini is 95 percent water it makes the muffins wonderfully moist. It’s also a good source of fiber, vitamin C, and potassium.
But don’t just make these muffins because they’re healthier than cake. That doesn’t cut it around here (or at your home either, I’m guessing). Make these because they are absolutely delicious.
As I prepared to write this post, I decided I’d better whip up a batch of these muffins so I could have the chocolaty-muffin-eating experience fresh in my mind. I also decided that I should sample both a warm muffin and a cool one, just to be thorough. The cooled muffins taste like wonderfully moist, dense, chocolate cake, with deep cocoa flavor (especially if you use darker, Dutch-process cocoa powder). Fresh out of the oven, they’re like eating warm, decadent, not-quite-molten chocolate lava cake with a thin, crunchy, crystallized sugar crust on top. It’s one of those eyes-closed, happy-sigh moments that make life worth living.
So go ahead, make some zucchini chocolate cupcakes–er, muffins–for dessert tonight. And maybe save some to put in your kids’ lunches–they have less sugar, calories, and saturated fat than a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Of course, with muffins this yummy, there might not be any left for lunch tomorrow. You might just have to make a double batch.
- 1 small zucchini
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup canola oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour (or 1 c all-purpose and ¼ c white whole wheat flour)
- ¼ cup baking cocoa
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon baking powder
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 12 muffin cups, or line them with paper liners.
- Wash your zucchini, trim the tough little end off, then grate the rest using a box grater (I use the stem as a handle, then throw the stem away when I’m done grating).
- In a mixing bowl, beat together the sugar, canola oil, eggs, and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the remaining ingredients (except the zucchini), then stir them into the sugar mixture until almost everything is moistened. Fold in the zucchini. Don’t overmix the batter, or your muffins will be tough, and that would be sad.
- Divide the batter among the 12 muffin cups, filling them about ¾ full. Bake them for 25 minutes, or until their tops are firm when lightly tapped with your finger.
- Cool 5 minutes, then remove from pan.
Want more muffins in your life?
