Chocolate Zucchini Muffins, Vegan Gluten Free

Recently I have had the need to bake something, mainly because I have been craving something chocolate. So I was looking around the internet for some chocolateness and came upon this recipe for chocolate muffins. The recipe looked fairly simple and I had most of the ingredients at my house which is usually a deciding factor for me. If the ingredients list has something new that I have to buy I am reluctant to use it. Mainly because if I have to buy a new ingredient that I will only use in this recipe, what happens if it sucks?! Then I have this random container sitting in my cupboard taking up space, and my kitchen is small as it is.

So after I made that amazing hashbrown casserole (found here) I decided to keep the ball rolling and try out this new recipe. I got the recipe from a vegan website but true to form I needed to make some changes to it. I never do things by the book, its not fun that way. I used zucchini to reduce the amount of oil I used, also I used carob power along with the cocoa to, again, reduce the cocoa in the mix, plus I had it in my cupboard and figured I should use it. If you want to look at the original recipe click here.

The muffins turned out really good, especially for gluten free and vegan. They are a dense muffin but still full of chocolaty flavour. The next time I try them I am going to do a regular gluten batch and I am going to put more zucchini in them, just to see how they compare. Once those are done I will let you know how they turn out!

Ingredients - Makes 12

1 cup of fresh orange juice, about 5 oranges

½ cup packed brown sugar

1 cup of rice flour

1 cup of coconut flour

1 tsp of baking powder

½ tsp of baking soda

¼ tsp of salt

¼ cup cocoa powder or carob powder

½ tsp of cinnamon

¼ cup of coconut oil, melted

¼ cup of zucchini, minced

½ cup of vegan chocolate chips

Directions:

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and get out muffin pan and liners.

- In a medium mixing bowl combine juice and sugar together, whisk together until well combined.

- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour’s, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and carob powder and cinnamon.

- Add oil and zucchini to juice/sugar mixture and whish until well combined

- Add flour to oil mixture and stir until well blended together. Stir in chocolate chips, you can ever save some to top each muffin with.

- Divide batter between muffin cups and bake for 18-20 minutes.

- Let cool for 10 minutes and serve!

Thanks for reading!

Xoxo -N