Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
These chocolate zucchini muffins are fluffy, moist, and supremely fudgy. These muffins are doubled down with chocolatey goodness from cocoa powder and chocolate chips.
Servings: 12 muffins
Ingredients
- 1¼ cup white whole wheat or all purpose flour
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup shredded zucchini, drained, pat dry (about 1 medium zucchini)
- ½ cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk or cows milk
- ⅓ cup pure maple syrup (NOT pancake syrup)
- ⅓ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ¼ cup coconut oil, melted (or canola or vegetable oil) *see note #3
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup mini chocolate chips, divided (dark or milk chocolate)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉. Line the muffin tins with liner or cooking spray.
- Shred the zucchini. Press as much moisture out of the zucchini as you can with paper towels or a kitchen towel. Transfer the zucchini to a fine mesh sieve to continue draining while you prepare the muffin batter.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix to combine.
- In another large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, zucchini, maple syrup, almond milk, applesauce, coconut oil, and vanilla extract.
- Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix to combine. Don't overmix the batter. You can have a few streaks or bumps of flour in the batter. Fold in ½ cup of chocolate chips.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling all the way full. You can top with the remaining ¼ cup of chocolate chips, if desired. Bake 18 to 22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean with a few crumbs (there shouldn't be any batter on the toothpick).
- Allow the muffins to cool in the muffin tins on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Transfer the muffins to the cooling rack to finish cooling. Enjoy!
Notes
- Can I make these muffins vegan - to make these muffins vegan, replace the eggs with flax seed egg. Also, be sure to use vegan chocolate chips. The texture and denseness may differ as a result.
- Can I make these muffins gluten-free - replace the whole wheat flour with all purpose gluten-free flour for the best results. You can try other gluten-free flours, like coconut, almond, or oat, but they will result in different texture and moisture content than all-purpose flour, so you may need to adjust the quantity. Note: we have only made these using all purpose and white whole wheat flour.
- How do I keep my coconut oil from solidifying in the batter - bring all the wet ingredients to room temperature to prevent the coconut oil from re-solidifying when added to the wet ingredients. To quickly bring eggs to room temperature, submerge them to a warm bowl of water. You can warm the milk, syrup, and applesauce in the microwave for a 10-15 seconds to speed up the process.
- My coconut oil turned solid, what do I do now - if you added melted coconut oil to cold wet ingredients, your oil likely re-solidified. Fill the sink with a few inches of warm water. Place the mixing bowl in the water. Whisk the wet ingredients vigorously. The oil should return to its liquid state in the warm water bath and you can continue with the recipe.
- How do I know if my muffins are done - insert a toothpick in the center of the muffin. It should come out with a few crumbs sticking to it, but no wet batter streaks.