Zucchini Oat Muffins, Gluten Free & Vegan

I’ve been trying out different zucchini muffin recipes this summer with the bounty of zucchinis from my garden. I wanted to make muffins, not loaves, so I could freeze them and be able to defrost exactly what I wanted. Plus, my daughter thinks muffins are fun, so I wanted a homegrown snack that I could feel really good about giving her.

I prefer baked goods that are gluten free since that is better for my personal health and I prefer vegan (or pareve) since I keep kosher and then I don’t have to worry about whether it can be mixed with other foods that contain either meat or milk. And something I really like about this recipe is that I don’t need gluten-free flour because the flour is made entirely from rolled oats. Oh, and did I mention that I need the recipe to be easy enough to get done quickly with a toddler wanting to help?

Well, I am happy to report that I found a recipe that I have been very happy with on all of these points. I have adapted my recipe from a recipe called Zucchini Banana Bread – NO Flour Required! It is basically the same recipe, except I make mine into muffins instead of bread, I only use the blender to grind the oats, then I combine all the ingredients in a bowl, I substitute applesauce for banana, or do a combination of the two, I prefer not to include chocolate chips (though you certainly could), and my baking time is shorter since it is muffins, not a loaf.

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups rolled oats

½ cup mashed banana

½ cup applesauce

1 cup grated zucchini

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp cinnamon

¾ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp salt

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup oil

½ cup maple syrup

1 ½ Tbsp vinegar

Time: 15 minutes preparation, 28 minutes baking

Yield: 12 muffins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F and grease muffin pan. Since I want the muffins to be vegan, I use Earth Balance or coconut oil to grease the pan, and I prefer using my silicon muffin pan to anything else because it is the easiest to remove the muffins from, but stainless steel is good too.
Put oats in the blender and blend until it looks like flour, but it can have a small amount of whole oats left to provide texture.
Pour oat flour into a bowl and mix in all the other ingredients.
Pour batter into muffin pan and bake approximately 28 minutes.