I thought about coming up with something innovative and intriguing to do with zucchini for this post.
I’ve reached the end of my alphabetical blogging challenge, you see, and I figured I should end it with a “bang”.
Yet in the end I went with the tried and true- a recipe for zucchini muffins.
These do have a twist, though, as they’re zucchini muffins without gluten or sugar.
Since I’m giving away a signed copy of The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam at the end of the month, I wanted to highlight one more recipe from this great book. You have until midnight on October 31st to enter the giveaway: you can find the rules here.
Note that Elana’s recipe in the book is actually for zucchini bread and her recipe calls for pecans and currants. I did have either of these on hand. So I made half of these plain (my daughter prefers them this way) and half with my favorite addition to zucchini bread: chocolate chips. Those without the chocolate chips are a nice gluten-free treat that’s perfectly sweet. Those with the chocolate chips are just…perfect.
I used organic semi-sweet chocolate chips to please my husband and son- feel free to use 70% or more dark chocolate chips for a slightly healthier version. If you don’t want to use any refined sugar at all in your muffins, look for grain sweetened chocolate chips made by Sunspire.
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Gluten-Free Zucchini Bread or Muffins (Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffin Recipe)
Makes 2 loaves (about 12 slices) or 9-12 muffins (depending on how big they are)
Ingredients
- *2 cups blanched almond flour
- *1/2 tsp. baking soda
- *1/2 tsp salt
- *1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- *1/4 cup grapeseed oil I used melted organic butter instead
- *1/2 cup agave nectar
- *2 large eggs
- *1 cup grated zucchini
- *1/2 cup pecans coursely chopped and 1/4 cup dried currants (I omitted and added 1/2 cup chocolate chips to 1/2 of the batter; add up to 1 cup chocolate chips to the whole recipe if you want them all to be chocolate chip zucchini muffins)
Instructions
- 1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease 2 mini loaf pans or 12 muffin tins with grapeseed oil (again, I used melted butter) and dust with almond flour.
- 2. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. In a medium bowl, whisk together the oi (or butter), agave and eggs. Blend the almond flour mixture into the wet ingredients until combined, then fold in the zucchini, pecans and currants, if using (or chocolate chips). Scoop the batter into the loaf pans or muffin tins. Depending on how full your muffin tins are, you may not fill all 12. If a few are unused, fill them up 1/3 of the way with water so the empty tins don't burn.
- 3. Bake until a knife inserted in the center of the bread or muffins comes out clean. This will take 40-60 minutes for the loaves, more like 25-30 minutes for muffins. If you've made bread, allow it to cool completely before slicing.
