My students often will ask, “Can we bake something? Pleeease??” Because to them baking means tasty treats. This week, I acceded, but with a caveat–the recipe had to be somewhat healthy. I also have a student with an egg allergy, so it had to be vegan. What I came up with was a chocolate-zucchini muffin recipe, modified slightly from this one at Happy Herbivore.
During my pre-class grocery run, I swept through the organic section of the supermarket and grabbed two green tubular vegetables that I thought were zucchinis. After arriving and setting up for class, I handed one of them to a student to grate. She took a long hard look and then raised her eyebrows at me. “Isn’t this a cucumber?” She asked.
At first I denied it. But when I looked closer, I saw that she was indeed correct. In my haste, I had misidentified a cucumber as a zucchini and my nine-year-old student caught me in the act! In a classic fake-it-till-you-make-it teacher move, I reassured her that it would be fine (I didn’t actually know.) We grated the cucumber, drained off some of the water, and added it to the batter. The result was a mouth-watering muffin, light and moist with only the slightest hint of the crisp green vegetable. By making this silly mistake, I learned that my students are paying sharp attention, and that there are plenty of options when it comes to incorporating vegetables into baked goods.
CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI (OR CUCUMBER) MUFFINS
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1¼ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 whole banana, mashed
½ cup raw sugar
2 tbsp flax seed + 2 tbsp water
¼ cup unsweetened nondairy milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 cup chocolate chips (or other add-in)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Grease muffin pan and set aside.
- Grate the zucchini and turn it over onto a paper towel to drain some of the liquid.
- In a large bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together.
- Whisk together flax seeds with water, to create two “flax eggs.”
- In a large bowl, cream mashed banana with flax seed and sugar. Add in the remainder of the wet ingredients and the grated zucchini.
- Gradually add flour mix to wet mix in and stir until combined. Add the chocolate chips and stir to distribute them throughout the batter.
- Spoon batter into greased muffin pan and bake for around 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.