Chocolate Muffins You Can Feel Good About

Initially, this post was going to bear the title “Healthy Baking And I Are Not Friends”. But upon reflection these muffins weren’t completely abysmal, unlike my non-life-changing bread from last week. Anyway, this week I tried my hand at a chocolate-zucchini muffin recipe I found via Pinterest. It promised to be gluten-dairy-nut-free, and because I still had quite a lot of gluten-free flour left over from my GF baking blitz earlier this year, it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to use it up.

Everything was going swimmingly, and then at the last moment, I discovered that my chocolate chip package had mysteriously disappeared (I’m not naming any names, but the letter K might be involved). No biggie, I thought and drizzled in some extra honey and dumped a couple tablespoons of sweetened cocoa.

Twenty minutes later, a dozen delectable looking muffins came out of the oven. They were nicely rounded, speckled with green bits that looked like pistachio nuts at first glance. I took a wary bite (I’ve started to expect disaster with most of my experimental baking these days), and found the texture to be pleasantly fluffy and decidedly muffin-like. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t sweet at all despite my addition of extra sweeteners. It actually tasted healthy, which could go both ways I suppose. I then added a dollop of whipped cream with a generous proportion of powdered sugar because I need my muffins to be sweet. One of my favorite cooking posts is from Elsie Marley, in which Meg wrote, “Yes, eggplant parmesan is delicious, but if you accidentally breaded and fried your kitchen sponge, then doused it in tomato sauce, it might be delicious too.” I feel the same way about whipped cream. By its simple presence, even the blandest confection is palatable, no?

There was enough batter to make eight more muffins and while the first batch was baking, I was able to scrounge around my baking basket and found a small handful of chocolate chips. Eureka! I added them to the remaining batter, and oh, that was the ticket. With even a small amount of chocolate chips, the muffins are good. It tastes great without whipped cream, but with it, it’s divine. K devoured it.

So. Not an epic fail this time, and full of veggies to boot. Not too shabby, not at all.