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Bake Muffins With Your Extra Zucchini

Reader Contribution by Erin Sheehan
Published on August 13, 2014
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We’ve eaten zucchini nearly every night for about a month now. Jim says he’s getting sick of it. Me, never; I love zucchini. But we really do have an awful lot of zucchini right now.

I’ve frozen about three dozen cups of zucchini milk for future bread-baking adventures, and I froze 14 cups of shredded zucchini last night. Come the dead of winter I’ll be able to bake a few loaves of zucchini bread to remind me of summer’s bounty. I also made a batch of zucchini muffins over the weekend. Muffins and bread are a great way to use up the zucchinis that hide under your plants and get too big for just eating.

One thing I’ve noticed about older cookbooks is the lack of muffin recipes. My grandmother’s cookbook/recipe stash has two muffin recipes: bran and corn. Yuk! I guess people just didn’t make a lot of muffins back then. If anyone knows why or has their hands on dessert-style (fruit, sweet) muffin recipes from pre-1940, I would love to hear from you.

I adore muffins, in part because they freeze well and with 30 seconds in the microwave, I can have a tasty treat at the ready. Here’s a simple zucchini muffin recipe for you to try:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups unpeeled, shredded zucchini
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups white flour (can substitute up to 1/2 whole wheat)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a regular-size muffin tin; set aside.

Combine the oil, zucchini, eggs and sugar in a large bowl.

In a second bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add the dry ingredients into the large bowl and stir just enough to combine. Add in walnuts and stir, but take care not to over-stir or your muffins will be tough.

Fill cups in prepared muffin tin just over two-thirds full with batter.

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes. Cool for about 5 minutes before trying to remove from the pan to a cooling rack. Yields about 12 muffins. Enjoy!