BoomerGirl Diary

A few weeks ago I bought some zucchini. I had planned to make a stir-fry with some onions and chicken, something really healthy. I don’t know who I thought I was fooling, but that plan did not come to pass. Somehow I got caught up in a sea of muffins — both sweet and savory. My natural inclination is to bake, and I started noticing zucchini muffins in the food blogosphere. They got to me!

Well, the more I started thinking about zucchini muffins, the more possibilities started popping in my head. I had some ripe bananas, so I could merge a banana bread recipe with a zucchini bread recipe, but make muffins! And I could add chocolate chips! Then I thought that I should be somewhat good and make only half with chocolate chips and make the other half with walnuts. I was thinking chocolate with zucchini, because one of my favorite food blogs is called "Chocolate & Zucchini." The blog was created by Clotilde Dusoulier, and her book with the same name was recently released. I’m usually not one to run out and buy a book immediately, but I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite some time now. I bought it and have been savoring reading a little bit each night just before bedtime, like a nice little snack, but without the calories. I cannot wait to try some of her recipes. But let’s get back to mine.

I found two banana bread recipes and two zucchini bread recipes, merged them with some changes and created my sweet muffins. I was going to bring these to work and share them with my co-workers, but they were so good that I kept them for myself and ate them over the next week. But I still had some zucchini left! I remembered that when I was looking through my recipes, I saw a recipe for savory zucchini muffins with cheese and pine nuts. I wanted something a little different and remembered an olive oil cake recipe that I had seen on another wonderful blog called Food Blogga. I took some of the ingredients and proportions from both recipes and came up with my savory muffin recipe. So there you have it. Zucchini muffins dressed up and dressed down, but always in style.

Banana & Zucchini Muffins

(½ dozen walnut + ½ dozen chocolate chip)

1 ¾ cups flour

½ tsp. sea salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg

½ cup vanilla yogurt

¼ cup grapeseed oil

2 small soft bananas (about ½ cup)

½ small grated zucchini (about ½ cup)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. nutmeg

¼ cup walnuts

¼ cup chocolate-chips

Put muffin liners into pan and heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, use a fork to smash bananas. Add yogurt, egg, vanilla, oil, nutmeg, zucchini and stir with wooden spoon until combined. Add salt, flour, soda and stir until combined. Pour batter into muffin pan. Top half of the muffins with walnuts and the other half with chocolate chips. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Savory Zucchini Muffins

(6 large muffins or 1 dozen regular sized)

1 cup grated zucchini

1/3 cup pignolia (pine) nuts

¼ cup shredded romano cheese

2 eggs

¾ cup vanilla rice milk

1/3 cup sugar

½ cup grapeseed oil

¼ tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 ½ cups flour

Combine ingredients in medium bowl. Do not stir too much. Pour batter into muffin pan (with muffin liners). Bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes.