Zucchini Muffins with Apricot Cream Cheese

My overabundance of zucchini led me to another zucchini recipe:

Zucchini Muffins with Apricot Cream Cheese

2 zucchinis, grated
2 cups flour
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg
6 tbsp butter, melted
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped

Preheat oven to 375.

Grease muffin pans.  (I made 6 regular sized muffins and 24 mini muffins)

Squeeze out all water from zucchini.  I used paper towels, squeezing excess water from handfuls of zucchini.  Lightly salt, and set in colander to drain further.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking power, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, yogurt, butter, lemon juice, and sugar until incorporated.

Fold the wet yogurt mixture into the flour mixture until just barely combined.  Add the zucchini, apricots and raisins.  Fold gently until ingredients are incorporated, but do not overmix.

Pour batter into prepared pans until 3/4 full.

Bake 8 minutes, checking on mini muffins. Bake until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire racks.

        Apricot Cream Cheese

8 oz cream cheese, room temp
1/3 cup apricot jam
1tsp Cointreau liquor (or any orange liquor)
2 tbsp confectioners sugar


Mix all ingredients.  Set aside to let flavors mingle.  After zucchini muffins are cooled completely, spread cream cheese on top, and decorate if desired.

A few other fave summertime recipes:

Zucchini Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables

Grilled Shrimp and Smashed Avocado

Zucchini Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables

    This dish... is awesome.  So fresh, so simple, so healthy.  You will need to buy a julienne peeler if you don't already have one (under $10, can find at Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc with vegetable peelers). 

    I used fresh produce I had lying around in the fridge.  You can easily add or substitute whatever you may have lying around.  My vegetable measurements here are approximate- add as little or as much as you prefer!  I served this with grilled chicken and leftover slider buns that I made into mini garlic breads (obviously if you are gluten free you will skip that part)!

Zucchini Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables

Serves 3-4

 You will need:

2 zucchini

10 mini sweet peppers, seeds removed and cut in fours

1/2 red pepper, cut into large dice

2 roma tomatoes, diced

About 12 grape tomatos, cut in half

2 large handfuls of fresh spinach, chopped

1/2 white onion, thinly sliced

4 anchovy fillets (used as a seasoning, you won't even know it's in there!)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

7 garlic cloves, minced

salt and pepper

Use the julienne peeler to make the spaghetti.

Place the zucchini spaghetti in a colander.  When you are finished making the spaghetti, put the colander in the sink and toss a couple pinches of salt on the zucchini.  Leave it sit while you prepare the rest of the meal.  (This step draws out some of the liquid so you don't have mushy spaghetti).  

Next heat water to steam the sweet and red peppers until still a bit crisp.  If you don't have a steamer, you can simply boil them for about 5 minutes.  The key here is to soften them a little bit, but to leave them with a little snap.

While the peppers are steaming/boiling, heat about 4 tbsp of olive oil in a large skillet over med-med high heat (heads up-this needs to be large, the zucchini and ALL veggies will wind up in here). Add the garlic, onion, and anchovies to the pan and saute, breaking up the anchovies until they melt away with your spoon (this should only take about 2 minutes... watch the heat of the stove- you don't want to burn the garlic!)

Once the anchovies have been incorporated with the garlic and oil, add the zucchini, gently tossing to combine.  Season with a little salt and pepper. Add the peppers and roma tomatoes, stir to incorporate.  Cook the zucchini  spaghetti about 3 more minutes.  Finally add the spinach and grape tomatoes.  Stir to combine well, and serve!

Slider Bun Garlic Bread

To make garlic bread out of slider buns, I simply minced a clove garlic and rubbed 1/2  on both sides of 2 slider buns ( a total of 4 pieces).  Then I melted 2 tbsp of butter in microwave until soft but NOT RUNNY.  I added the other 1/2 of the garlic clove, a pinch of salt, stirred until it was a thick buttery garlic paste, and buttered the buns.  Put into toaster oven until slightly golden, and voila!

Zucchini Plans...

Tonight's Agenda:

I'll be playing with zucchini recipes, as I've somehow acquired a drawer fun of zucchini.

 Gluten Free Pasta- with zucchini spaghetti.

Some sort of zucchini bread creation will also go down tonight.  I'm thinking an apricot twist... we'll see.

Stay tuned for the recipes!