Gingerbread Muffins

We've moved on from fall. You haven't? Well, that's awkward. Bust out some festive socks and blast some Josh Groban/Michael Buble, stat! And while you're at it, get these muffins in the oven too. Previously we did a combo apple-pumpkin-gingerbread muffin but no more. We are full on gingerbread this week.

It's gonna be sticky because gingerbread usually is but it's also gonna be delicious. Stick with it (ha, get it?). Okay, the cold meds are showing, focus.

 

It seems like the theme of 2016 holiday baking for me has been treacle (molasses). I used an entire can of it in a month and I think I'm set for now on gingerbread things. But first, muffins!

Dry ingredients are combined in one bowl, wet ingredients in another. If you measure the vegetable oil first, the honey and molasses will easily pour off the measuring spoon into the wet ingredients. Mix the oil, honey, treacle and eggs in a small bowl. Add to the dry ingredients and mix in the milk as well.

 

It gets a little sticky because honey and treacle are just that. Spoon into a prepared muffin pan (I wonder what would happen if you made a muffin cake...is it then just a cake?) and bake until firm.

You can dust with powdered sugar for a festive appearance or enjoy plain.

 

Recipe

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (300g)
• 3/4 cup plus 1 Tablespoon brown sugar (160g)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil (100ml)
• 5 Tablespoon honey
• 2 Tablespoon treacle (molasses or an additional 2 Tablespoons of honey)
• 1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon milk (100ml)
• Powdered (icing) sugar for garnish (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a muffin tin and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and salt).
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, oil, honey, molasses and milk.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until combined (you can use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula).
5. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin, filling each cup about half-way. 
6. Bake for about 30 minutes or until firm and a skewer poked in the middle of the muffin comes out clean.
7. Garnish with a dusting of powdered sugar if desired.
8. Makes about 12 muffins, maybe a couple more if you make smaller muffins.

 

Pumpkin Apple Gingerbread Muffins

At long last, I have cracked the butter problem. It was a simple solution all along: a food scale. One of my flatmates brought one into our home and I think I'm in love. No more guessing grams or guessing tablespoons of butter! Now, I can weigh it. So I just have to be able to check my math, no biggie...

 

These muffins were meant to be a bridge from fall into the holiday season, combining the top fall flavors (apple and pumpkin) with the festive foods of Christmas (ginger and molasses). I've had to Google things in the grocery store aisle a few times in London, mostly because the aisles are organized differently (sugar is with coffee and not baking at some stores). But I've also Googled because things have different names and molasses was no exception. Instead, we have 'black treacle'.

 

The only time I've heard of treacle before was in the Harry Potter books when discussing treacle fudge. So now I can say I've baked with it and made magic--okay, that might be a stretch. The can of treacle is cute and British but is also very impractical for pouring. Treacle everywhere. Mischief not managed.

As always, cream together room-temperature butter (or in my case, gently microwaved butter) with the sugars until combined. Next, add in the eggs, vanilla, pumpkin puree (DIY recipe coming soon!), milk, and treacle (aka: molasses). I suggest using a mixer for this. Beat until everything is nice and smooth.

Stir in the spices, salt and baking soda and powder. Then slowly add the flour in, mixing gently to prevent a dust storm. Sometimes it's inevitable. Mix until no streaks of flour remain. Lastly, fold in the chopped apple. You could also add nuts to the batter if desired.

 

Bake at 350F for 20 minutes or until baked through. The batter makes 24 muffins. Allow to cool before enjoying, possibly with a good cup of tea--or coffee.

Recipe

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup pumpkin puree
• Scant 1/3 cup whole milk (or full 1/3 cup of greek yogurt)
• 2 Tablespoons treacle (molasses)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2-2 1/2 cups apples, peeled and chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line a muffin pan. Set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugars.
3. Add the wet ingredients (eggs, vanilla, pumpkin, milk and treacle) to the butter and sugar. Mix until combined.
4. Mix in the salt, baking soda and powder as well as spices. 
5. Next, add the flour, 1 cup at a time, stirring until no flour streaks are left. At this point, I switched so a spoon instead of a mixer to minimize mess. 
6. Lastly, fold the apple pieces into the batter until evenly mixed.
7. Bake for 20 minutes until firm and cooked through.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Swirl Muffins

I think I'm sending mixed messages. I've been posting some healthy recipes, some gluten free, some sugar free, a nice variety of healthy-sounding things. These muffins are by no means 'healthy' or free from anything. They're wonderful and decadent and a great twist on fall flavors but definitely more of a good for the soul treat than a good for you treat.

That all being said, these are pushing the banana walnut muffins out of the front running spot for most popular. They also were more work intensive as they have a cream cheese filling. I haven't restocked my kitchen with all my fancy gadgets so no hand mixer blending cream cheese here. I did however buy a whisk! Officially moved in. So I let the cream cheese soften overnight instead and then it was nice and soft, easily stirred without a mixer.

 

Initially, we're keeping everything separate. Flour (the gluten-full kind), pumpkin pie spices (or if you have the store bought combination of pumpkin pie spice), baking soda and salt go in one bowl. I definitely adding baking powder by mistake. It's times like these I realize I shouldn't make muffins at 9am pre-breakfast and also adding your ingredients to different sections of the mixing bowl makes it easy to scoop out such an error.

 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, sugar and brown sugar. There's something festive about brown sugar, it's often used for fall and holiday baking so I'm all about it. Add in the eggs, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Simple whisking will suffice here. Carefully add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture. With a stand mixer or hand mixer, you'll get a puff of flour cloud happening. With stirring by hand, you just get some flour sloshed over the sides. Either way, expect flour showers.

 

Once the flour is stirred in and you have a lovely orange batter, fill the muffin tin about 3/4 full. Before popping in the oven though, we make the cream cheese part! Mix your softened cream cheese with sugar, egg, and vanilla extract. Stir until smooth and spoon a solid dollop (scientifically speaking, a dollop is a tea-spoon amount--not to be confused with a teaspoon which is a precise unit) on top of each tin of muffin batter. Use a toothpick or knife to swirl around the cream cheese. It doesn't look pretty but it will bake and puff up nicely.

 

It's really hard to tell when these are done by poking the top because of the cream cheese. So definitely use a toothpick or skewer in the center of the muffin to confirm when they're baked through. Likely this will be 40 minutes.

 

Allow to cool slightly before consuming en masse. We aren't going for healthy here.

Recipe
Muffins

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 15oz. can of pumpkin puree
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Filling

• 8 oz. plain cream cheese, softened
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 375F. Line a muffin tin and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree and sugar until combined. Add the eggs, oil and vanilla. Whisk until smooth again.
4. Slowly add the flour mixture into the egg mixture. You can use a wooden spoon for this, whatever gets all the flour mixed in and leaves you with a smooth orange batter.
5. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin, filling 3/4 of the way.
6. In a small bowl, stir/mix/beat together the cream cheese, egg yolk, sugar and vanilla.
7. Spoon the cream cheese mixture on top of the muffin batter. Use a toothpick or knife to swirl the cream cheese topping with the pumpkin batter.
8. Sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top for fun, if you have some lying around.
9. Bake until cooked through and firm, about 40 minutes.
10. Makes 12-18 muffins.

 

Muffin Monday Recap

There are 52 Mondays in a year (sometimes 53). Not that I make muffins every single Monday although I'm feeling the pressure but that's a lot of muffin variations. To me, the standard muffins are blueberry, poppyseed and those delicious cinnamon coffee cake ones at Dunkin Donuts. Woah. Serious deliciousness.

If we take a step back, there are distinct categories of muffins. We've got:

Classics

• Berry- blueberry, strawberry, cranberry, mixed berry, the combinations aren't endless but you can't beat a good blueberry muffin.

 

• Poppyseed- my personal favorite because lemon! But orange was pretty tasty too.

 

• Banana- A surprising crowd pleaser! I though banana bread would trump every other banana variety but banana walnut was the most complimented!

Almost a Cupcake

• Chocolate- chocolate for breakfast?! Yes please. 

• Pumpkin- just add Nutella. Still a muffin, really close to a cupcake. 

 

Crunchy/Healthy

• Vegetables- sneak your vegetables wherever you can, even if it's in a muffin!

 

• Oats- basically baked oatmeal in a handy muffin shape

So far, the classics have been the most popular but I'm looking to expand. I've starting getting requests including another pumpkin variation and then I would like to go for some more oatmeal-inspired ones.

What are some of your favorite muffin flavors? 

Banana Walnut Muffins

When you tell people about a goal or an initiative, it keeps you accountable. When you make a hashtag about it, you're really dedicated. And with great power, comes great responsibility. I've started worrying that I will run out of muffin types soon, thus putting #muffinmonday at great risk. I really thought I had made banana walnut muffins before and this would be a repeat but alas, I thought about making banana walnut muffins last year but the bananas went...bananas. So I made maple walnut instead.

Therefore--banana walnut muffins are new and exciting!! Hurray muffin flavors!!

This recipe capped off the last of my muffin pan liners. Such timing. I ended up finding this recipe on Pinterest after consulting my cookbooks and mostly finding banana bread. I'm sure you could put banana bread batter into muffin shape and call it a day (a dense muffin day) but let's focus on banana muffins. Nice and fluffy with some good crunch added in there.

I still had gluten-free flour from the previous week's muffin recipe so these are also gluten-free. But there is added sugar and bananas themselves are pretty sweet too.

Bananas are mashed and then mixed together with eggs, oil, milk and sugar. The flour, oats, salt, baking powder and soda are whisked together in a separate bowl and a well is created to pour in the wet ingredients. My well runneth over...

Mix it all together with a wooden spoon and it starts to get thick and be very battery. Lastly, the walnuts are folded in. I also had leftover walnuts from carrot cake muffins so this worked out well. Alternatively, you could mix in chocolate chips because chocolate.

Baked until golden brown in a 350 degree oven, muffin perfection.

I love the smell of muffins baking on a Sunday afternoon. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit back and inhale (the muffin air and then the warm muffins themselves).

Recipe

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cups flour 
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup walnuts, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a muffin tin and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. In a measuring cup or small bowl, whisk together the eggs, bananas, milk, oil and sugar. It's easier to pour if you mix it in a measuring cup.
4. Create a well in the flour mixture (just moving some of the mix to the side). Pour the egg mixture into said well.
5. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together until no flour streaks remain.
6. Fold in the chopped walnuts.
7. Spoon into the prepared muffin tin, filling 2/3 full.
8. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.
9. Allow to cool slightly before peeling off the wrapper. 

Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

A couple weeks ago, I reintroduced Muffin Monday to the blog and introduced it for the first time to my office here in London. Since then, I've been traveling on the weekends, going to festivals and weddings (which are kind of like festivals, right?) so haven't had an opportunity to make more muffins.

 

 Well, I guess I've learned the acceptable gap in Muffin Mondays because I 100% got called out for talking up Muffin Monday and then only bring muffins 'like one time'. So here are some more muffins! And I'm brainstorming some more...but am traveling again over the weekend so another brief hiatus in the Muffin Monday might occur.

 I wasn't sure how much flour I had left so I looked up oatmeal muffins first. However, the recipe I initially chose required the oats to soak for 8-12 hours and ain't nobody got time for that. I might have time for that in the future but not this time. Fortunately, I had exactly enough flour to complete this recipe! Serendipitous. And no butter measurements required, woohoo!

 Flour, oats, sugar, salt, and baking powder are mixed together in a large bowl. In a measuring cup, whisk together one egg, vegetable oil and milk until smooth. Pour into the large bowl with the flour mixture, stirring until combined  and no flour can be seen. Fold in the blueberries last.

 Fill your prepared muffin tin about 2/3 full in each cup and top with cinnamon-sugar.

Remember how I said I wasn't very functional in the morning? Well, I made these first thing on a Sunday morning and when I got to making the topping, I mixed equal parts cinnamon and sugar. That's a lot of cinnamon. Fortunately, I realized my mistake and added more sugar before topping the muffins. Now I have a bunch of cinnamon-sugar leftover but there are worse things to have.

 Bake for about 20-25 minutes, depending on your oven strength, or until firm. Allow to cool slightly before unwrapping, otherwise the muffin bottoms might stick to the paper. Still delicious, but less graceful to eat.

 Recipe

• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cup quick oats
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup oil
• 3/4 cup blueberries
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 425F. Line a muffin tin with paper cups (or grease the pan well) and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, oats, sugar (just the 1/2 cup), salt and baking powder.
3. In a measuring cup or small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk and oil. Pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients.
4. Mix the batter with a spoon until combined and no flour can be seen.
5. Fold in the blueberries.
6. In a small bowl, mix the 2 Tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Stir with a small spoon until evenly mixed.
7. Fill the muffin tin about 2/3 full of batter. Sprinkle cinnamon-sugar mix on top to lightly coat.
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden-brown and cooked through.
9. Allow to cool slightly before serving. 

Orange Poppyseed Muffins

As you know, my baking pan situation of late is somewhat diminished. This hasn't stopped the creation of delicious baked goods and healthy meals though! But it is hard to supplement for a muffin pan. I was hanging out with coworkers after going trampolining (it's a real thing) and somehow muffins came up and I did this impression of the Gingerbread Man from Shrek being interrogated (around 30 second mark for the muffin man bit):

It was certainly amusing to them although not everyone knew what I was talking about so it was slightly embarrassing for me. But that brought us to the old tradition of Muffin Monday where I would bring muffins to work on Mondays. Offended that I hadn't done so yet in London, I explained to them that I didn't have a muffin pan. Desperate for muffins, a colleague offered up her never-been-used-and-unlikely-to-ever-be-used muffin pan to the cause.

 

And so, Muffin Monday returns!! I've been wanting to make poppyseed muffins for awhile because lemon poppyseed is irresisitable to me but the woman who donated the muffin pan favors orange poppyseed so I was happy to oblige. It really  just involved switching lemon zest and orange zest, nbd.

 

Sugar and orange zest are combined, the basic step in making a homemade scrub (in case you were wondering). You start to smell the orange fragrance enhance immediately. Set that aside, taking some good deep whiffs first. In a separate bowl, we get the dry ingredients and in yet another bowl, the wet ingredients (butter not included yet). The dry ingredients should be in the largest bowl because we're adding everything to this. First the sugar mixture gets stirred in.

 

Then the butter is cut into the flour mixture. I no longer have a pastry cutter but a knife, fork or your fingers work just fine. Dig a little well in the flour and pour in the wet ingredients. This is where the muscles come into play. Stir and stir and stir some more (add some folding in there for good measure) until everything is combined. Don't forget to add the poppyseeds once the batter starts to take form.

 

This batter got sticky and thick the more I combined the ingredients. I could see the magic happening. One problem I have with cold cut butter is the fact that I always end up with chunks of butter that melt and cook differently than when the butter is creamed. Alas, muffins still worked their magic but it was interesting to watch them bake up in different ways as a result.

 

These didn't taste overly orangey to me, I barely noticed the citrus in the final product. But I suppose lemon poppyseed muffins can be pretty mild on the citrus front as well. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could make a citrus glaze with orange juice (or lemon juice) and powdered sugar. 

Recipe

adapted from Shutterbean

• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Juice from 1 orange (or 2 lemons)
• 1 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar
• Zest from 1 orange (or 2 lemons)
• 3/4 cup of butter, cold and cut into cubes
• 3 Tablespoons poppyseeds

1. Preheat the oven to 375F (or 190C). Line your muffin tin and set aside.
2. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and zest. Stir with a fork until the zest is mixed in completely. The sugar should clump together as it takes on the moisture from the zest.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, yogurt, vanilla and juice.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add the citrus sugar to the mix and stir to combine.
5. Cut in the cold butter until a coarse meal forms.
6. Create a well in the flour mixture and pour in the wet ingredients.
7. Stir in the citrus sugar. Stir until the ingredients are all mixed together and no flour is visible.
8. Fold in the poppyseeds.
9. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling each cup 1/2-3/4 of the way (you can adjust on the second round for a fuller muffin if needed).
10. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown and cooked through.
11. The recipe should make 12 large muffins but I ended up with about 30 small muffins instead.

Maple Walnut Muffins

I had every intention of taking a step back from fall things and making banana muffins. The bananas, however, had other plans. I really thought I could just freeze the bananas and then thaw them and they'd be okay. Falsehoods. They got really syrupy and rotten and gross. Plan B: maple walnut muffins. Much more seasonally appropriate and not squishy.

People wonder why I bake all the time or how I find the time and honestly, it's hard sometimes to carve out time so I'm not rushing through a recipe. But I find baking very cathartic. I can just listen to music and mix together ingredients, making a creamy batter that will become a delicious muffin or donuts or cake. And then I get to relax and listen to music while everything's in the oven, it's like 'me time'. Not that I really need to carve out me time, my life is basically my time at this point.

 

 These muffins were a little more intensive because they have a topping. I opted out of the suggested icing though. I know that muffins are really just cupcakes that are acceptable for breakfast but the topping seemed sufficient. I do have a pretty difficult time making the topping crumbly enough but if you too have this struggle, just make sure you have a chunk of butter in there and it will melt and cook up just right.

 

I typically try to position my baked goods with some healthy twist like telling my coworkers that there's Greek yogurt in there or not that much butter etc. I pretend that will make people eat them up faster. Recently, one of them pointed out that they would eat them regardless of how healthy I try to make them sound. But these muffins have oats! And they have Greek yogurt! And really the only butter is in the topping! Look at all the healthy things! Eat the muffins...

 

Recipe

Muffins

• 1 3/4 cup of flour
• 1 cup rolled oats, run through a food processor
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 Tablespoon maple syrup (or extract, if you have it)
• 1 cup walnut pieces

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a muffin tin with liners (or spray with non-stick).
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flours, processed oats, baking powder and cinnamon.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, milk, oil, yogurt and maple syrup.
4. Stir in the dry ingredients in with the eggs mixture.
5. Fold in the walnuts.
6. Fill each muffin liner 3/4 full and top with the topping. 
7. Bake for 30 minutes or until cooked through.

Topping

• 2 Tablespoons cold butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 Tablespoons flour
• 2 Tablespoons rolled oats

1. In a small bowl, combine the sugar, flour and oats.
2. Cut in the cold butter with a knife or pastry cutter.
3. Sprinkle on top of muffin batter in the pan. 

Pumpkin Muffins

We are taking this fall situation head on. I personally would like a giant pile of leaves to jump into. Kthnx.

While pumpkin spice lattes (and everything else) have been around for a few weeks now, I hadn't cracked open a can of pumpkin until this past week. And it's gonna be all downhill pumpkin from here! This recipe only required half a can of pumpkin, so I used the other half to make some pumpkin chili (pardon the ancient and terrible photos that went with this post, I was young).

Muffin Mondays are gaining popularity at the office so after last week's zucchini muffins, I took a poll on just how ready for fall people were. Would they prefer banana (no fall for me, please), apple (okay, I know, we're getting there) or pumpkin (wooo!! It's fall!!!!!)? The resounding winner was pumpkin. I also made these during the blood-moon eclipse so maybe they should be called Lunar Muffins...

For good measure, I threw some chocolate chips into half the batch because chocolate chip pumpkin anything is a great idea. Cookies, bread, muffins, you get the idea. We do the thing where we separate our dry and wet ingredients. I used the spices that smell like fall baking. No joke, I woke up the other morning smelling apple pie in the oven. It was a lie but it stuck with me.

I love the color of pumpkin, the burnt orange of the filling makes me feel all the warm fuzzies. The flour mixture is slowly poured into the wet ingredients and stirred gently until everything is combined. I like that for muffins, I can just use a good old fashioned wooden spoon and don't have to use a hand mixer. It helps that the butter was melted for this recipe.

I think there's some serious potential for cupcake liner companies to make a liner that has a 'fill here' line. Sometimes you get too much and they overflow (not a bad thing, necessarily) or you put too little and then you have a sunken cupcake/muffin. I know the expansion rates of the batter will vary by recipe but ya know, ball park estimate.

At any rate, I filled these about 3/4 of the way full and baked for 30 minutes or so. While the first batch baked, I sprinkled chocolate chips into the remaining batter. Great plan. All in all, there were 18 muffins out of all of this.

Let's keep the trend alive, more muffins next week!

Recipe
From Joy of Cooking

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup pumpkin puree 
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Sprinkling of chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 400 and line a muffin tin with liners (or spray with non-stick spray)
2. In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, maybe some cinnamon if you'd like).
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, pumpkin and melted butter. 
4. Once the wet ingredients are thoroughly combined, pour the dry ingredients into the wet while stirring gently.
5. Using a wooden spoon (or other stirring utensil), stir the wet and dry ingredients together until fully combined.
6. If you'd like, add the chocolate chips (or nuts) and fold into the batter.
7. Pour the batter into the muffin liners, filling 3/4 of the way full.
8. Bake for 30  minutes or until firm. 

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

I missed the part where it was September. Yes, I've had my pumpkin spice latte. Yes, I've pulled out the sweaters. Yes, I noticed it's getting darker way earlier which makes me sad. But somehow, I woke up and realized it's almost October--OCTOBER?!?! I've got a stockpile of apple and pumpkin all ready to go but I can't quite commit to October treats just yet. Maybe next week.

To bridge the gap, I brought back Muffin Monday at work. Zucchini is still the love my summer life and I've made oodles of zoodles (mostly so I can say "oodles of zoodles" more often). When I was in Maine a couple weeks ago, my mom and I made a double batch of zucchini bread (so much zucchini bread). My mom usually makes it chocolate zucchini bread but this time, we did a nice half and half of regular and chocolate loaves.

Inspired by this epic baking session, I created these chocolate zucchini muffins as a way to have a healthy breakfast on the go. Instead of oil, we're using Greek yogurt. I also solidly believe the yogurt gives a better texture to breads and muffins. For good measure, we're also adding pecans--because we [pe]can! You know you love the puns.

 

A large zucchini is shredded onto a double layer of paper towels. You need to squeeze out that extra water from the vegetable before we make it into muffins. One bowl contains our zucchini, another contains our dry ingredients while the biggest bowl has the wet ingredients. Eggs, sugar and yogurt are whisked together before stirring in the dry ingredients. When I started this process, I wasn't going to make them chocolate so I added the cocoa powder after the fact. It worked out in the end.

 

Zucchini and pecans are added last, gently folded in to make sure you get a good bit in every bite. I baked these for about 30 minutes. Of course I ate one right away but without oil, they stick to the wrappers a bit until they are cooled. Tastes the same but you get less muffin for your buck until you let them set.

 

So what will Muffin Monday be next week, pumpkin? Apple? Banana? Decisions, decisions...

Recipe
adapted from Joy of Cooking

• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups grated zucchini, drained of excess liquid
• 1/4 chopped pecans (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or grease with cooking spray.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the sugar, eggs, yogurt, vanilla and salt until creamy.
4. Slowly stir the flour mixture into the egg-sugar mixture until incorporated.
5. Fold in the zucchini and pecans (if desired) until evenly mixed.
6. Fill muffin tins 3/4 of the way with batter.
7. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick placed in the center comes out clean. 
8. Allow to cool before eating.