“Your body is not your masterpiece, your life is.”

— Glennon Doyle

Happy Spring, my friends!!

So, I have a very similar recipe here, which is my chocolate zucchini cake covered in a match glaze (YUM!), but I wanted to make this slightly more kid-friendly! As Oliver is almost 13 months (what the heck!!??), I will happily admit that he has already consumed a little bit of chocolate—no shame here! That being said, we are trying to make sure we never sugar-overload with him, and the only sugar he generally has is from natural sources, like fruit. Of course, most of my baked goods have at least a touch of sugar, and these zucchini muffins are no different! In the 9 large muffins that I made, there is only ¾ cup of sugar, which is 12 tablespoons total, or 1 TBL + 1 tsp per muffin (I think!!). All in all, Oliver’s sugar intake per muffin is small, seeing as he doesn’t even eat ½ a muffin at a time!

Woo, that was a lot of quick math there. Anyways! If you check out the chocolate zucchini cake recipe that I did YEARS ago, you’ll see why I’m obsessed with adding zucchini to a recipe like this—aside from the childhood memory of it, it adds an extra amount of moisture, some vegetable intake, all things I’m here for, especially with a little one! Oliver has been devouring these in the morning with his breakfast, and it makes my heart SO happy! Of course, this kid is going to (hopefully) love baked goods, but if we can also teach him the importance of fruits and vegetables along the way, my job will be done!

I had Oliver help me in making these, and aside from sneaking a taste of the butter, which he wasn’t a fan of, he did tremendously! He helped mix and fold, which I was so pleased with. Then, it was time to put some chocolate chips on top of a few of them, so I showed him how to do it, thinking he would follow my lead, but he ended up just taking a handful of the chocolate chips and putting them directly into his mouth. Of course, why was I surprised?! Regardless, it was a wonderful first little baking adventure together, even if he had maybe 10 mini chips, who cares! These are perfect for kids, for adults, for breakfast, for a snack, we can’t get enough in our house and hope that you experiment with adding some veggies to your morning muffins, too!

ingredients

Butter—6 oz, or 1 ½ sticks

Brown Sugar—5.25 oz, or ¾ C

Eggs—3

Vanilla Extract—2 tsp

Flour—13.75 oz, or 2 ¾ C

Baking Powder—2 ½ tsp

Baking Soda—1 ½ tsp

Salt—1 tsp

Cinnamon—2 tsp

(Oat) Milk—4 oz, or ½ C

Zucchini, shredded—16.5 oz, or 2 C

Chocolate Chips (Optional)—to sprinkle on top

process

Preheat your oven to 350˚F

In the bowl of your mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth

Add in the eggs, one at a time, and mix until combined; add in vanilla extract

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon

With the mixer on low, slowly pour in about ½ of the dry mixture, then ½ of the milk; scrape down the bowl

Add the remainder of the dry mixture and milk; mix until just combined

Fold in the shredded zucchini

Spray your muffin pan with nonstick spray (we used large muffin pans, so this recipe made 9 muffins)

Fill each cup up about ¾ of the way full

Optional—sprinkle chocolate chips on the tops of the muffins

Bake in the oven for 18 minutes, rotate, 15 minutes

This time was for large muffins, so if you are doing smaller muffins, start with 10 minutes, rotate, 10 minutes

When the muffins spring back slightly when touched, remove from the oven and allow to cool before taking them out of the pan

Bon Appétit!

“I hope your days are filled with countless tiny miracles unfolding continuously, sewn together in the mess you call life.”

— Sjana

CHRISTMAS IS THIS WEEK!!

Am I the most excited person in our house?! Absolutely! Am I hoping that in the coming years, Oliver will join me on the excitement train?! DUH! This has always been my favorite time of the year, there’s just no way around it. We have been binging all of the Christmas classics: Elf, The Santa Clauses, A Christmas Carol, terrible Lifetime and Hallmark movies, you name it! Oliver could care less, yet he has been becoming more and more attracted to the gifts under the tree, but he is still in his “I love dog toys” phase and “let me open drawers” phase.

While he may not be as keen about the holidays as I am (yet!), one thing that he does love is food! If we sit down for a snack, he needs a bite; if we have water, he needs a sip; if he sees something on our dinner plates that isn’t on his, he must have it—you get the picture! That being said, I have been waiting for this day, when I could bake with my little one, and it honestly was SO much fun! Oliver mainly just wanted to play with the dough and eat as many cookies as he could before I could stop him, but I rolled with it!

Growing up, making Christmas cookies and bread was quite an event! My mom would bake dozens of Challah and cinnamon swirl loaves to give to friends, tins and tins of spritz cookies, gingerbread, PB balls, galore! We would also always do a gingerbread house decorating contest (cannot wait for this in the years to come!), and I wanted to start some traditions with our little guy! That being said, I wanted to make a KID FRIENDLY recipe for Oliver. That means low on the sugar pole but stuffed with spices! We aren’t giving him chocolate just yet, he doesn’t consume that much dairy, and he seems to be ultra-sensitive to sugar, like he gets very hyper! Honestly, what would you expect with an (almost) 11-month-old?! So, I wanted to make these as low in sugar as I could, cutting the amount of molasses in half and using less brown sugar than normal. To me, I am all about the spices in a gingerbread cookie, so that is definitely not lacking whatsoever here! Due to cutting out some molasses, I added in some dairy-free milk to make sure these cookies are nice and moist! Overall, Oliver LOVED these (see below!), and I cannot wait until we decorate them next year with candies and icing and who knows what else! For now, I’m going to enjoy my sweet little bub and all of his craziness, hopefully we don’t eat all of them before Santa comes!

ingredients

Butter—4 oz, or 8 TBL

Brown Sugar—3.5 oz, or ½ C

Molasses—3.75 oz, or 1/3 C

Vanilla Extract—1 tsp

Egg—1

Flour—18 oz, or 3 C

Baking Soda—1 tsp

Salt—1 tsp

Cinnamon—1 ¼ TBL

Ginger—1 ¼ TBL

Cloves—½ tsp

Allspice—½ tsp

Dairy-free milk—2.5 oz, or 5 TBL

process

In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5-10 minutes.

Add in the egg, vanilla and molasses to the mixer, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl every few minutes. It will begin to look slightly curdled—that’s okay!

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and all of the spices.

With your mixer on low, add this to your creamed mixture, mix until just combined.

Slowly stream in your milk, mix for about 30 seconds so that a homogenous dough forms.

Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and put in the fridge to firm up, either a couple of hours or overnight.

When you are ready to bake your cookies, preheat the oven to 350˚F.

Knead the dough with your hands a bit so that it warms up and is easier to roll out.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough until it is about ¼” thick.

Using whatever cutters you would like, stamp out cookies and place on a baking sheet that is lined with either parchment, a Silpat or nonstick spray.

Continue to reroll the dough until you have used it all, making sure to keep the cut-out cookies in the fridge until you are ready to bake them.

Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, 4 minutes.

Allow to cool on a rack prior to either decorating or eating!

Bon Appétit!