Zucchini Muffins

Based on the contents of my past few CSA boxes, zucchini is doing really well this year. Or at least there's a lot of it growing. It's a veggie that you can easily add to just about anything, and that's pretty much what I've been doing with it. Grated, it makes a wonderful "raw" pasta substitute, I love it lightly stir-fried with other veggies, it's delicious sauteed and added to salads, omelets, or whatever else is cooking, and then of course there's always zucchini bread. My grandmother used to make it every summer. She would bake it in loaves, and then sandwich softened cream cheese between thin slices. It tasted like cake, and I suppose it practically was the way she made it. YUM.

I started looking online for gluten free zucchini bread recipes, and I came across some zucchini mini muffins with chocolate chips over on Elana's Pantry. I love that website, and I have her Gluten Free Almond Flour cookbook, which I use regularly. She now also has a Gluten-Free Cupcakes book, which is now on my wish list, if anyone is feeling generous.

But I digress. Here is the Gluten Free Zucchini Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins recipe, and the only things I changed were my typical substitutions of using coconut oil for the grapeseed oil and maple syrup for the agave nectar. Oh, and I doubled the recipe because these muffins haven't been lasting any time around our house.

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Mini-Muffins
¼ cup coconut flour
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
¼ cup coconut oil
¼ cup maple syrup
1 ½ cups grated zucchini (do not pack down when measuring)
½ cup dark chocolate chips

Combine coconut flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. Set aside.

 

Combine eggs, oil, agave and zucchini. This bowl was plenty big enough the last few times I made this recipe, but I neglected to consider that this is a double recipe, and therefore required twice the space. I needed a bigger bowl.

 

Thoroughly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Then stir in the chocolate chips.

  

The recipe says to grease and flour the muffin tin, but I just used nonstick cooking spray. The first time I made this recipe, I lined the cavities with mini muffin cups, but the batter (and chocolate chips) then stuck to the paper, so this is one of those recipes that works better in a naked pan.

 

For mini muffins, spoon a tablespoon of batter into each cavity. I thought I'd have enough batter to make 12 standard size muffins as well since I doubled the recipe, but I only got seven. Bake at 350° for 18-22 minutes.

 

Some recipes work best if you make them as intended, and I think this one might fall into that category because the standard size muffins didn't come out as well, quite literally.

  

Once the muffins have cooled a few minutes, run a knife along the sides, and the minis pop right out. A few of the bigger ones weren't so cooperative. But they still taste delicious!

 

Do you have a favorite zucchini bread recipe? If so, leave a comment letting me know, and I might just try it--or attempt to make a gluten-free version of it.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are times when I really, really, want chocolate. Occasionally these times occur when I don't have any chocolate in the house apart from some Ghirardelli baking chips. Rather than just eating the chocolate chips, although they are nice enough to enjoy that way, I decided to make some gluten free chocolate chip cookies. I love the Elana's Pantry website, and I've tried making the chocolate chip cookie recipe in her Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook twice before, but with less than optimal results.


The first time I neglected to read the caveat of not using Bob's Red Mill almond flour in any of her recipes. Since it's the only brand almond flour that's readily available to me and what I had sitting on my pantry shelf, I used it, and she's right, it does not work in her recipes. By the time I got round to my second attempt I had some almond flour that I ordered from Honeyville. But I forgot to let the dough chill before baking, and the cookies spread out all over the baking sheet into one huge mess. It was a tasty mess, but still a mess, nonetheless.

This time I wanted to get it right. Except, I didn't have 2 of the necessary ingredients: grapeseed oil and agave nectar. So I used coconut oil and maple syrup instead. I also only had the Ghirardelli 60% chocolate chips, not the 73% cacao used in her recipe.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (gluten free)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Combine the almond flour, salt, baking soda in a bowl and whisk together.

  

In another bowl whisk the coconut oil, vanilla, and maple syrup until well combined. Now, because coconut oil is solid at room temperature, I put mine in a glass bowl and placed it on the oven while it was preheating, which melted it. BUT, when I added the cool maple syrup to it, that made the mixture go all clumpy and curdled as the maple syrup caused the coconut oil to go solid again. So, I placed that bowl on the oven until everything was the same temperature and I could whisk the ingredients into a smooth mixture.

  

Combine the wet and dry ingredients, and then fold in the chocolate chips.

  

Allow the dough to chill in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes before scooping out onto the baking sheets, leaving a couple of inches in between each cookie. I used a 1 tablespoon sized disher for this.

I ran out of parchment paper, so I improvised by using Wilton parchment triangles to line my cookie sheets. I don't recommend doing this. Those things are designed to be formed into parchment piping bags, not used for baking, and some of my cookies stuck.

Bake for 7-10 minutes, and then cool on a wire rack. These came out much better than my previous attempts. I think I could have baked them another minute or so longer, because they're pretty chewy, but they're still delicious.

Now my only problem is that I can't stop eating them. So, while they don't last very long, at least they're easy to make.