Banana and Zucchini Muffins

Remember when I ate 30 different veges in 30 days and vowed to post more recipes with vegetables? No, you probably don't because you're probably here for the brownies and  ice cream. Me too. Unfortunately being healthy is important and balancing the food groups is key to a healthy diet. That's why today's vegetable (and fruit) recipe takes the shape of a muffin!

While cleaning out the freezer, I found 1/2 cup of shredded zucchini that got shredded and frozen just in the nick of time (meaning that it was probably too squishy for anything else but not yet moldy). "Bring on the zucchini bread!" I thought, only to realize that zucchini bread, zucchini cake, and zucchini blondies all require more zucchini than I had on hand. It seemed counter-productive to have to go to the grocery store to acquire more zucchini in order to salvage that measly 1/2 cup. I could have made zucchini cupcakes, but I wasn't feeling chocolate.

Meanwhile, in the fruit bowl sat a bunch of very sad looking bananas. Three of them became SoNo Baking Co. Cookbook's Banana Cream Tart. (You can find a copy of the recipe here.) The rest needed to be frozen or baked into something delicious, and since we are moving abroad in 30 days (um, exactly 30 days from now… what!), they certainly weren't going into the freezer. Enter: Banana Zucchini Muffins. Why? Because there is no such thing as "not enough zucchini" or "too many bananas." Zucchini is the gift that keeps on giving and banana is the fruit that's better to forget about until it's black and squishy. Paring them together is just plain thrifty, not to mention delicious.

Objective
Make banana zucchini muffins with [mostly] whole grains. Adapted from Taste of Home's Zucchini Banana Bread.

Materials
Dry:
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon flaxseed meal
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Wet:
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 egg
1/4 cup olive oil (light in flavor)
1/2 cup banana, mashed (about 2 small bananas)
1/2 cup zucchini, shredded

Optional:
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Methods
1. Preheat the oven to 325º. Prepare a muffin pan by lining with paper cups or greasing (or place silicone muffin cups on a baking sheet) and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry. Do not over mix, stir only until the ingredients are incorporated. Fold in the walnuts (if using).
3. Pour the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full.
4. Bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack, then flip out of the muffin pan.

Makes 10 small muffins.

Results
Incredibly moist, soft, and healthy? Ok that last part is stretching it. Best within 24 hours or they get sticky to the touch from all the moisture.

Discussion and Future Directions
When C got home from call, the first thing he did was walk into the kitchen and stuff an entire muffin into his mouth. "What do you think?" I asked. His response was a muffin-muffled, "Good!" I wasn't sure he could actually breathe, and since taste requires smell and smell requires breathing, I wasn't convinced. However, a few hours later when he woke up from his post-call nap, his eyes lit up. "Muffins!" he remembered, then walked into the kitchen and returned with three. He proceeded to butter them and eat them slowly. This time I believed him when he told me they were good.