
These Maple Zucchini Muffins had a very short and specific shelf life. By day 3 they were no good anymore, but for two perfect days, they were glorious.
Baking Adventures In A Messy Kitchen
A blog about healthy baking, with occasional dips into decadence.
These muffins are magical.
I don’t know who Kathie is, but I started with her recipe, played with it here and there, and created something exquisite. Everything came together in perfect balance, in both flavor and texture. I’m going to try to recreate these because I have to find out if it was a fluke or if there really is such a thing as muffin perfection.
This recipe called out to me but it took a while for me to heed the call.
First of all, it was based on a recipe by Marcus Samuelsson, whose memoir Yes, Chef was a recent and engaging, fascinating, inspiring, and delicious read. I’ve never tried any of his recipes before, and I had actually pinned this one a few weeks ago. But then I saw this version of it, which seemed to preserve the general nature of it but healthed it up a bit, finding alternatives to the sugar (which I would simply have reduced) as well as the oil.
Pretty, they’re not.
Delicious, they are. And then some. They’re bursting with chocolate and coconut with just a touch of cinnamon, and not a whisper of zucchini hits the taste buds. Amazing.
I confess that I was very, very nervous while I was making them. I changed so many elements of this recipe that I had no idea if I was going to be elated by success or depressed by failure, and then have to go hungry as well. But sometimes a baker has to take a few chances.
Finally!
This delicious, satisfying chocolate zucchini bread came on the heels of two very unfortunate baking experiments, and a last-minute mishap to boot.
Failure #1: I tried to make a zucchini bread without chocolate chips or cocoa powder. Now I know that it’s possible to make a good spiced zucchini bread, but the recipe I tried did not generate one.
These muffins are wonderful. The amount of chocolate chips was just right, the sweetness balanced beautifully with the spices, the crumb was soft and fluffy, and the zucchini provided moisture and nutrition without ever rearing its ugly head into the flavor. A gem, this one. I feel like these muffins are helping me slowly inch towards a zucchini bread without cocoa powder. Perhaps I am beginning to understand the powers of the humble zucchini
Things don’t always go well in baking. Sometimes, you just learn about what doesn’t work, and move on. And that’s today’s lesson. Oops. I didn’t bake last night, I went to some crazy “Restore The Core” class instead. It wasn’t exactly a mistake, but I won’t be going back. I felt good for having done […]
I decided there were more chocolate zucchini recipes out there worth trying. So I tried one. I admit I am a little distracted today. In addition, we had our summer outing at work today, so I spent the afternoon on a boat cruising around Manhattan. It was actually quite lovely, with wonderful views of the […]
As Nathaniel & Juliet would sing, “It’s the final countdown…” All week I have been using my colleagues at work as guinea pigs. They tasted, they described, they compared and contrasted. They weighed the issues: kids have to like them, they can’t be too messy, they need to appeal to the widest variety of tastes, […]
read about Night 1 read about Night 2 Tonight was the last night of true experimentation. Whatever I make tomorrow goes to the kids at St. Philip’s Academy for Read It All Up®, and that’s that. But tonight I went back to the site where I found the extremely delicious recipe for Secretly Healthy Chocolate […]
Most people who know me know of my hatred of cooked vegetables. Unless you count corn and potatoes, which are more like starches, I don’t eat any cooked vegetables at all, ever. Oh, Dave sometimes purees some carrots and sneaks them into the spaghetti sauce, and I make carrot oatmeal muffins, but that’s really as […]
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