I received a comment yesterday from Emily conveying that she had quite a bit of zucchini “kicking around” the house. This morning, I figured that I would offer a sweet and delicious way to put some of that excess zucchini to great use! If you have never tried chocolate zucchini muffins before, you have truly been missing out! They are just slightly sweet, with a rich, deep, complex depth of flavor. They will make for a delicious treat any time of day, and I really hope that you will all give them a try – even if you are not currently being overrun by zucchini!
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons canola or olive oil
2 large eggs
1 cup unsweetened applesauce or mashed banana
2 heaping tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup finely shredded (or grated) zucchini
2 tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and generously grease a 6 cup jumbo (or 12 cup standard) muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.
In a large bowl, combine the sugar, oil and eggs and mix well until creamy; Stir in the applesauce (or banana) and mix well again.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add this dry mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring until just combined. Fold in the zucchini and chocolate chips until everything is well incorporated.
Divide the batter evenly between the muffins tins and bake for about 20 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted n the center of a muffin comes out clean).
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Makes 6 jumbo (or 12 standard) muffins. Per jumbo muffin: 265 calories, 3.5 g total fat, less than 0.5 g saturated fat, 0 g trans fat, 33 g carbohydrates, 6 g fiber, 6 g added sugar, 7 g protein, 147 mg sodium, less than 1 mg cholesterol
6 responses so far ↓
1 Emily // Aug 21, 2007 at 9:48 am
Thank you for this recipe! I will be making it this week, I’m sure. I have been making a chocolate zucchini loaf that is fairly low-fat, but the recipe doesn’t use banana and calls for way more sugar… I am really looking forward to trying this one out very soon. (I can use up a few of my many frozen bananas as well as my zucchini — great news.)
Thank you again.
2 Jessica // Nov 30, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I plugged in these ingredients to http://caloriecount.about.com, and I got a pretty significant difference in total nutritional value (366 calories with 12.6 grams of fat). Is there any specific brands of ingredients I should be using? I can’t figure out what would account for the discrepancy.
3 Shannon // Nov 30, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Jessica,
Well, I do use only unsweetened, all natural applesauce, chocolate chips, and cocoa powder, etc. – and I also know that most generic supermarket flour has 110 calories per 1/4 cup, whereas the kind that I use (organic, all natural, unbleached, unbromated flour) contains only 100 calories per 1/4 cup. Also, most supermarket eggs have about 70-80 calories each, I get mine from the farmer’s market, and they contain 65 calories each. But even with all of those factors, I don’t see how the numbers could be so different. Here is my calories info for these muffins (taken right from the back of the package, or nutritiondata.com):
pastry flour: 600 cal
all purpose flour: 200 cal
sugar: 180 cal
canola oil: 240 cal
eggs: 130 cal
applesauce: 100 cal
cocoa powder: 30 cal
zucchini (by weight): 48 cal
chocolate chips: 70 cal
which adds up to 1598 calories, divided by 6 = 265 calories per muffin.
4 Jessica // Dec 3, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Shannon,
Thanks for getting back to me. I think that in your calculation, you only accounted for 1 serving (2 Tbsp) of chocolate chips, rather than the amount called for in the recipe, 1/2 cup. So that would be about 450 calories in 1/2 cup, rather than 70 (I think… haha).
5 Shannon // Dec 8, 2007 at 8:11 am
Jessica,
You are correct – on my recipe card, I have the ingredients listed as 2 tablespoons chocolate chips. Thank you so very much for bringing the error to my attention. I greatly apologize for the mistake, and appreciate you making me aware of it. I have also gone back and double checked all of the recipes on the site that include chocolate chips, to make sure that I did not make the same mistake!
Thank you again,
Shannon
6 Jessica // Dec 10, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Thanks for checking… keep up with the great work, I love your site!
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