Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

I have been making chocolate zucchini muffins for a couple of weeks now and have finally gotten the recipe just right and ready to post on this blog. It took quite a bit of tweaking since I wanted to keep the muffins low in fat and sugar but still tasting good. The batch I made this morning exceeded my expectations: the girls ate their muffins in silence for several minutes, not even taking a break to talk. What could be better first thing in the morning?

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
makes 6 muffins

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour
• 1/4 tsp. and 1/8 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/8 tsp. sea salt
• 3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder. I use Ghirardelli brand.
• 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla. Use Trader Joe's alcohol-free vanilla extract or another vanilla extract that does not have corn syrup and is preferably alcohol-free, since the alcohol could be derived from corn.
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/4 cup almond milk (or Lactaid milk if making the muffins for Michael as well)
• 1/2 cup packed grated zucchini (about 1 small to medium-size zucchini)
  
• chocolate chips. Use Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips or Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate chips. These two brands of chocolate chips are dairy-free and are also smaller in size than the Trader Joe's chocolate chips, so they work better in the muffins.
  

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease 6 cups in a regular-size muffin tin using canola oil or Spectrum Organic shortening (which is soy-free). In a medium-size bowl mix together all of the dry ingredients: the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, cocoa, and sugar. In a small bowl whisk together the egg, vanilla, canola oil, and milk.

Peel the zucchini and grate it onto a plate using the large holes of a grater. Measure 1/2 cup of zucchini, pressing the zucchini into the measuring cup, and then add the zucchini to the liquid in the small bowl. Stir to combine. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients and then pour the wet ingredients into the hole. Stir the ingredients together until you don't see any more flour.

Pour the batter evenly into the 6 muffin tin cups. Drop 7 to 10 chocolate chips on top of the batter in each cup. Put the muffin tin in the oven and bake for 17 minutes (or a couple of minutes more or less depending on your oven). When you remove the muffins from the oven and test them with a tooth pick, a few crumbs should still stick to the tooth pick. As soon as you take the muffin tin out of the oven, remove the muffins from the muffin tin and let them cool for a few minutes before serving.