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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Eat your Vegetables! Zucchinis can Be Yummy!

For the longest time, we had trouble convincing the children that zucchinis are an edible food. No matter how the hardworking parents served it, there was always lots of whining and complaining. That is, until the day I encountered a recipe for Chocolate Zucchini Muffins, when I was browsing the Internet for desserts. Since we like playing in the kitchen and experimenting with ingredients, we slightly alter the basic recipe every time we make it. But find the basic ingredients needed below:

All you need is a couple of eager assistants plus:

  • 3 eggs
  • 2 cups of sugar (in the recipe it said white, but I also tried with a light brown sugar and it worked fine!)
  • 1 cup of vegetable oil
  • 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
  • 2 cups grated zucchini
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour (part of it can be replaces with whole-wheat flower)
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • chocolate chips
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (175 C) Lightly grease two 9x9 inch Pyrex glass dishes. You can also bake this batter in two muffin pans. I made them as a party treat for my son ...
  2. In a rather large bowl mix together beaten eggs, sugar, oil. Add the vanilla, cocoa powder, and grated zucchini and mix them well together.
  3. Mix the dry ingredients: Flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg. Add them to the liquid ingredients. The batter needs to be moist. We did not drain any liquid from the grated zucchinis as some recipes suggested.
  4. Pour batter into greased Pyrex dishes or muffin pans. Decorate the top with chocolate chips. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes. Insert toothpick to make sure it's baked all the way through.


It's so chocolaty and yummy I promise the children will fight over who gets to eat more of the vegetable dessert.

7 comments:

woolies said...

There's a bakery nearby. I never go to a bakery, as I'm a baker! BUT they make a zucchini nut bread that is the most amazing thing I ever ate. so .. once in a while ...
(and they will not share their recipe, poo).
This sounds yummy!

Eve's Little Earthlings said...

I made zucchini with Chocolate chips for years for my daycare kids. I find that if you add either chocolate chips, ketchup or cream to the appropriate recipes, practially anything can be a kids favourite. (this works with adults too, I am sorry to say)

Lovealittle said...

Hi are you all following Jamie Oliver, the series with school dinners is being screened in the UK atm.

I made 2/3 this recipe and made 12 large size muffins, I added 5ml vinegar to add to the acidity for rising, I had no chocolate chips so added 1/3 extra cocoa.I had petit pan squash and grated half an overgrown one instead of the courgette.

The resulting muffins are super delicious and loved by all the family :)

Thanks, Ulla for sharing xxx

germandolls said...

Hey, Jane. I didn't know one could add vinegar to make stuff rise. I shall try that next. Thanks for sharing your experiment with us!

Lovealittle said...

You can add vinegar or lemon juice or natural yoghurt to help with the texture of muffins :)

I teach Food tech so experiment all the time!

Mike said...

I love how you got them to eat zucchini by cooking it in other yummy foods. I find that cooking the vegetables helps make kids want to eat it more. I find that getting organic helps too because it tastes a lot better.

germandolls said...

Yes, Mike! You are absolutely right. Organic tastes soooo much better!