You know what I love? When I’m able to pass off nutritious and healthy food as candy or cake or other treats to my kids or others.
Take these chocolate zucchini muffins. I made them to serve my family for breakfast in place of cereal. I wanted them to be refined sugar free, filled with protein and whole grains, and vegetables. Oh, and I wanted them to be super awesome.
I based these off of this recipe, transforming it to make it gluten free, vegan, refined sugar free, etc… and the results were amazing.
My only regrets is that I need to order more coconut sugar from iherb before I can make these again…

I loved serving these for breakfast. My kids loved them and I had absolutely no guilt about serving them this “treat”.

If you want to keep these gluten full, feel free to replace the first 6 ingredients with 2 cups of gluten flour. You can also use any other gluten free all purpose flour mix- you don’t need to use these exact measurements like I did- just follow these rules if you want to mix up your own gluten free flour mix.

And of course, if you want to keep the costs down, you can replace the coconut sugar with white sugar.

This makes 24 muffins.

While my husband was very skeptical at first about zucchini with chocolate, in baked goods… these won him over and he approved.

Guilt Free Chocolate Zucchini Muffins Recipe- Gluten Free, Vegan, Refined Sugar Free, Xanthan Gum Free

Ingredients:
1/3 cup chickpea flour
1/3 cups buckwheat flour
1/3 cup millet flour
2 tablespoons brown rice flour
1/2 cup short grain rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch (or 2 cups of wheat flour or other all purpose flour instead of this and all the previous flours listed)
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
3/4 cup boiling water
1 cup oil (use whatever you consider to be healthiest- I used coconut oil but any is fine)
1-2 cups coconut sugar (or sucanat, or white sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups shredded raw zucchini
1 cup chocolate chips (optional, and totally not necessarily)

Directions:
1. Mix flax seeds with boiling water. Let sit for 10 minutes.

2. Combine the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together in a bowl; stir until well combined.

3. Whisk together the flax eggs, oil, and coconut sugar together until well combined.

4. Add the zucchini and mix.

5. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and mix until combined.

6. Add chocolate chips if desired.

7. Spoon evenly into 24 muffin tin molds.

8. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until a knife/toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

9. Let cool before eating.

Enjoy!

P.S. These freeze very nicely, and taste delicious even frozen, straight out of the freezer.

P.P.S. These are relatively sweet, so if you want to experiment with cutting back on the coconut sugar, you can.


Do you have any “treats” that you serve your family that are actually very healthy? What are they? What makes them healthy?
Does this look like something you’d make for your family?

Linking up to Real Food Wednesday and Allergy Free Wednesday.