Zucchini bread and muffins

Chris has been bugging me for a couple weeks now to make him some zucchini bread because of an episode of ‘How I met your Mother’ that we watched. In the episode one of the main characters Marshall goes for Brunch with another guy and has some zucchini bread that he exclaims is “ridonkulous”.  If you haven’t seen the show yet I would definitely recommend it. It’s almost like a funnier, cruder version of Friends, except they hang out in a bar instead of a coffee shop.

Sorry, off topic Anyways, I wanted to ‘Feed two birds with one scone’, so to speak, and make Chris some easy to transport zucchini muffins, and a delicious [healthy] loaf that I could bring for dinner to our friends house the following evening.

The muffins and loaf were such a huge success that I’m not going to change the recipe AT ALL. I even got a certain someone who “doesn’t like zucchini or any vegetables” to reach for seconds!!!

I started with a recipe that I found on allrecipes.com and went from there. I wanted to make the recipe as healthy as possible so I used apple sauce in place of half the oil. I used a ground flax seed mixture in place of the eggs which made the loaf and muffins even lighter, whole wheat flour instead of all purpose and added some freshly grated nutmeg. I filled my bread pan first and then started on the muffin cups and near the end of the batter I threw in a few chocolate chips so we could test what those would taste like as well! That’s the beauty of muffins, you don’t have to have 12 of the same thing as it is really easy to portion your batter and add different optional ingredients to each.

So moist, fluffy and delicious… and gone already. I think I might have to make another batch this weekend!

Healthy Zucchini Bread & Muffins

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg (yum)
3 teaspoons cinnamon
3 tablespoons ground flax seed mixed with 9 tablespoons water, let stand 3-5 minutes
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup apple sauce
1 cup brown sugar
1 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups grated zucchini (around 3 zucchinis)
1 cup chopped walnuts
optional: chocolate chips, raisins, an additional 1/4 cup ground flax seed


Grease and flour one bread ban and line muffin pan with paper cups.
Sift flour, EXTRA ground flax seed, salt, baking powder, baking soda, grated nutmeg and cinnamon in large bowl.
Beat ground flax seed mixture with, oil, apple sauce, vanilla and sugars together in another large bowl.
Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared bread pan.
I poured about 6 regular muffins and then added some chocolate chips and filled the rest of the cups.
Bake loaf for around 50-60 minutes depending on your oven [when a toothpick inserted deep into the middle comes out clean] and muffins for 15-20 minutes [or until toothpick inserted comes out clean].
Cool on racks.

I don’t have a picture of the muffins this time around because they were devoured before I remembered to take one…and the picture of the loaf was taken with Chris’ cell phone in our friend kitchen just before IT was devoured so I apologize for the poor quality!

Tagged: bread, Delicious, Healthy, Muffins, substitutions, zucchini, zucchini bread