Name: Healthy Zucchini Muffins with Freshly Milled Flour
Cook time: 20 min
Ingredients: 1/2 cup olive oil; 2 cups organic cane sugar; 3 eggs; 1/2 cup sour cream (or plain whole milk greek yogurt); 3 3/4 cups freshly milled wheat flour; 1 tsp. baking soda; 1 tsp. salt; 1/2 tsp. cinnamon; 1/4 tsp. aluminum-free baking powder; 1 tsp. vanilla; 2 cups zucchini, grated; 1 cup chocolate chips

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Growing Zucchini

The inspiration for these Healthy Zucchini Muffins comes from our garden. We have raised a small garden for the past 3 years. In Florida, you can garden all year long! The catch? From June through August, nothing grows except tomatoes and peppers because it is too hot! In the fall and winter months, we plant Romaine lettuce, broccoli, and Red Pontiac potatoes. In January, it’s time to start your tomato and pepper seedlings indoors. By February, you can plant your spring garden.

This year, we bought a few tomato and pepper seedlings for our spring garden and planted green bean, yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumber seeds directly in the ground. All the plants have done great! Our soil is very sandy and does not have a lot of nutrients, so we spent a lot of time in the first couple of years adding compost and garden soil. This year, we just used our homemade compost at planting time. Our zucchini plants are huge! I keep on missing zucchini hiding behind the leaves

Zucchini is full of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. It’s especially high in vitamin C and beta-carotene which support eye health.

How to Process Zucchini

To use up our zucchini, we have started making a lot of muffins. Zucchini makes muffins moist and flavorful. Making these muffins is a great way to get your kids to eat extra veggies!

In the past, I used a cheese grater to grate zucchini for recipes. Now, I just wash the zucchini, slice it up, scoop out the seeds, throw the slices in the Ninja Food Processor, and push the chop button. If the zucchini has grown too large and has a touch skin, I will peel it first.

If you harvest zucchini early enough, you don’t even have to take the seeds out because they will be quite small. If you chop up the zucchini fine, you can put it in spaghetti sauce and meatballs without anyone noticing. When I process zucchini, I chop up a few at a time, put the diced-up zucchini in a kitchen towel, and squeeze out as much water as I can. Then I will place whatever I am not using that day in a plastic freezer bag and freeze it laying flat. That way, when gardening season is over, I still have zucchini in the freezer, chopped up and ready to go.

How to Make Healthy Zucchini Muffins

To make zucchini muffins, preheat your oven to 350°F and gather your wet ingredients. You will need ½ cup of olive oil, 2 cups of sugar, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup sour cream, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Cream your oil and sugar together, then add eggs and sour cream.

For the dry ingredients you will need 3 ¾ cups of freshly milled wheat flour. I suggest using soft white wheat berries for this recipe since it does not require yeast. After that, you’ll need 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon of baking powder.

When the dry ingredients are incorporated, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 2 cups of zucchini. For this recipe, you want the zucchini to be full of moisture. If using fresh zucchini, do not wring all the water out with a kitchen towel. If using zucchini that was previously wrung out and frozen, you will find there is plenty of water left in the freezer bag when it thaws. Drain some of the water, but leave some to pour in with the zucchini.

freshly grated zucchini going into zucchini muffin batter

After this, add 1 cup of chocolate chips. Zucchini and chocolate pair perfectly together! Stir these in with a spatula or spoon, or you can use your mixer like I did.

chocolate chips being poured in zucchini muffin batter

Baking Healthy Zucchini Muffins

Place muffin liners in your muffin tins. I like these unbleached muffin liners on Amazon. Spoon the batter in until the muffin cups are 2/3 of the way full and bake at 350°F for 20 minutes.

This recipe will make 2 dozen muffins. Often, I will double the recipe, pop the muffins in a freezer bag when cool, and stick them in the freezer for a quick weekday breakfast. Usually, I will pair these with a side of scrambled eggs for protein. This combo will keep my kids full for several hours, unlike cereal which keeps kids full for 30 minutes.

Come Back for More Easy Healthy Breakfast Ideas!

This is post 2 in the series Easy Healthy Breakfast Ideas. Post one has a recipe for Baking Sheet Pancakes with freshly milled wheat flour. Hope this series encourages you to make healthy breakfasts for your family! Eating healthy is not difficult, it just takes a little thought and planning.