These Zucchini Oat Muffins are filled with oat flour, zucchini, banana and applesauce, for one healthy breakfast recipe! It’s a great way to use up any extra zucchini you may have from your garden.
I would like to confess my undying love for oats now.
As someone with a gluten intolerance, I could easily turn to many gluten-free flours in my recipes (which, I do sometimes). But I’m always on a mission to find the easiest, healthiest options out there.
Oat flour fits that bill 100%. You can either buy oat flour already made, or you can make your own oat flour (by blending up oats in a high powered blender or food processor).
I think you all already know my undying love for muffins too. So, yet again, I’m whipping up some oat flour muffins, Zucchini Oat Muffins to be exact.
I love making oat flour based muffins for breakfast because they’re filled with extra fiber, and they’re fluffy and moist.
Case in point:
- Carrot Coconut Oat Muffins
- Dirty Chai Oat Muffins
- Chocolate Banana Oat Muffins
- Double Chocolate Pumpkin Oat Muffins
- Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oat Muffins
- Apple Cinnamon Oat Muffins
- Banana Nut Oat Muffins
- Lemon Chia Oat Muffins
- Orange Carrot Oat Muffins
As you can see, I love oat muffins.
These Zucchini Oat Muffins are a great way to use up your extra zucchini in a healthy, sugar-free muffin recipe. They’re fluffy, moist, and filled with chocolate chips so kids love them! 🙂
So, do you have way too much zucchini?
Chances are, if you have a garden, that’s the case! I know I love gardening and without fail every year we have plenty of zucchini. They grow like crazy.
For these Zucchini Oat Muffins you can use either fresh shredded zucchini or frozen zucchini, from last summers garden.
I love shredding and freezing zucchini in my deep fridge in ziploc bags. Then I can use it in muffins or sauces all year long! Just thaw it beforehand, and be sure to squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Pat it dry, and add it to your muffin batter.
As you can see in the pictures, above, I used frozen zucchini. The result is zucchini that’s a lot smaller than using fresh zucchini. After you bake these muffins though, you’d never know!
Let’s talk about a few more things before you get to baking.
First, to keep these Zucchini Oat Muffins gluten-free be sure to use certified gluten-free oat flour (or oats).
For the sake of ease, and to ensure your baked goods turn out and aren’t a crumbly mess, I recommend buying oat flour. Unless you have a high powered blender and can get your oats blended up as fine as the oat flour you can buy in a store. For example, my blender does a great job blending up oats, but my food processor does not blend my oats up fine enough.
If you’ve never worked with oat flour, I recommend buying some the first time so you can see what the texture is supposed to be like.
If you tried blending up your oats and they aren’t fine enough (ugh, crumbly muffins?!), don’t worry. You can remedy the problem by using part oat flour and part all purpose flour (or gluten-free all purpose). I’d recommend 1 cup of oat flour and 3/4 cup all purpose flour.
To make these Zucchini Oat Muffins dairy-free, you can use coconut oil or a dairy-free butter alternative, and dairy-free chocolate chips.
These muffins are sugar-free. For the best flavor and texture I recommend both applesauce and banana, or all banana (for a stronger banana flavor).
We love these muffins with chocolate chips, but I’d also recommend nuts and cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top (prior to baking). You just can’t go wrong with any of those options though! 🙂
What do you think of these muffins? Let me know in the comments, below, with a star rating. And find me on Instagram and tag me too! I love to hear from ya’ll and see what you make.
Oh, and before you leave, check out my Zucchini Bread Breakfast Cookies, Zucchini Bread, and Zucchini Oat Pancakes too!
- 1 3/4 cup oat flour (certified gluten-free)
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup butter or coconut oil, softened
- 1/2 cup mashed banana (about 1 large banana)
- 1/2 cup applesauce (sweetened or unsweetened)
- 2 tbsp almond milk (or milk of choice)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups zucchini, shredded (squeezed and patted dry)
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional) or nuts
-
Preheat oven to 350 and spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray.
-
To a small mixing bowl, add all your dry ingredients and stir them together (oat flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt).
-
To a large mixing bowl, add your butter/coconut oil, banana, applesauce, milk, vanilla and eggs and blend them together with a hand mixer.
-
Pour your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients and stir them together till you have a smooth, even batter.
-
Add your zucchini and chocolate chips to your batter and stir until well incorporated. Fill each muffin cavity with batter about 2/3 way full.
-
Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes, or till the tops are springy to touch and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
-
Devour!
I would recommend storing these muffins in the fridge (in an airtight container) and they'll last about a week. These muffins are also freezer friendly!
I was worried as these slightly fell after removing from oven – but to my surprise they were not dense but light and fluffy! I love them more than another recipe I used to make that were very dry. Perfect!
Hi! I’m wondering if you can substitute pumpkin for zucchini? I’m looking for a pumpkin muffin recipe with no added sugar! Thanks for any support!
Hi Anna. I wouldn’t recommend substituting the zucchini with pumpkin. I do have a Pumpkin Banana Muffin recipe that only has 1/4 cup of brown sugar in it? You could try it with 1/4 cup of maple syrup instead as well. Pumpkin muffins without sugar are awfully bland, unless you use some sort of other sweetener. Hopefully this info helps!
Hi Anna, I have substituted the banana for pumpkin and half the oil as well.
Why baking powder and baking soda? It may be an English cooking thing but I understood them to be interchangeable except baking soda requires an acidic element (buttermilk’s/lemon) to make it activate. If just using baking powder what would you recommend the ratios to be?
Hi Anna. Yes, the baking soda works with the applesauce in this recipe as the acid. Baking soda is also much stronger than baking powder (by 3-4x). I would not recommend using just baking powder for these, because I’m not sure that it would work properly and if you did use just baking powder you would need an awful lot to make up for the baking soda. I hope this info helps.
Can i make this recipe without eggs or can i use egg whites only? What do i replace eggs with?Thanks.
Hi Sunita. I’m not sure if these would work with just egg whites, but I’m sure flax or chia eggs (1 tbsp flax/chia seed mixed with 2.5 tbsp of water, let sit till gelled) should work fine! The muffins will be a touch more dense but should still be great.
I didn’t have any vanilla, used only 1/4 cup coconut oil and oat milk instead of regular milk and waaaay more chocolate chips and they turned out incredible! Thank you! ????????
Awesome, Andrea, your welcome! Thank you for the awesome comment! 🙂
So is the 1 cup of zucchini post squeezing it out or before squeezing it out? Because 1 cup after squeezing is 1/2 cup.
Hi Lindsey. Great question, sorry it wasn’t clear in the recipe. 1 cup prior to squeezing it out. Hope that helps!
Hi there! Would instant oats work for this?
Hi! I would not recommend instant oats, just rolled oats.
I make these with 1/4 c coconut oil and 1/2 c coconut milk, and they still turn out beautifully moist. This is a family favorite that I’ve made a few times already! Thank you so much!!
Awesome, Gracie! Thanks for letting me know, that made my day!
I don’t like bananas and find their flavor pretty strong. Anything I could replace for the banana? I have Celiac but no other food issues.
Hi Sonja, You can also try and use applesauce in place of the banana (although you may end up with a muffin with a strong applesauce flavor), or regular white sugar should work in it’s place too. Hope this helps! 🙂
Hi Stephanie,
Would I be able to reduce the coconut oil to 1/4 cup &replace the chocolate chips with raisins. Thanks
Hi there – You can reduce the coconut oil to 1/4 cup, but also add another 1/4 cup of milk to the recipe (1/2 cup of milk total). The muffins turn out great this way too! And yes, you can definitely replace the chocolate chips with raisins as well.
Can you replace the coconut oil with something?
Hi Stephanie, Yes you can replace the coconut oil with butter if you would like!