Zucchini Cranberry Muffins

Zucchini Cranberry Bread

Wet Team:

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2 2/3 cups sugar
• 3 cups shredded zucchini
• 4 eggs
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tsp vanilla

Dry Team:

• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 2/3 cup coarsely chopped nuts
• 2/3 cup cranberries

Zucchini Cranberry Ingredients

Heat oven to 350′ degrees. Grease muffin pans.

Mix shortening & sugar in a large bowl, and cream. It should look vaguely like this;

Creaming the sugar and margarine

Now get ready for the real fun; prepping the zucchini! If you have a ridiculously huge zucc like I did, then this should prove entertaining, and hilarious.

Sliced zucc prepared for severe chopping

To prep the zucchini:

1. Wash the skin
2. Cut into rounds
3. Cut rounds into sections so the zucc gets evenly destroyed in the chopper
4. Pile a bunch of zucc strips into the chopper
5. Chop! Chop! Chop!

Chopped zucchini

Spoon massive amount of shredded zucchini onto baking pan

Add the shredded zucc, eggs, and water to the batter.

Make sure to spill some zucchini shreds in to your coffee or hot chocolate!

Carefully  add in flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves & vanilla.

With a wooden spoon, wrestle in some nuts and cranberries.

Using a releasing ice cream scoop, evenly fill your muffin cups. This recipe is modified from a zucchini loaf recipe, which calls for 60-70 minutes in the oven, but these muffins were ready in about half the time. After 20 minutes I checked these consistently every 5 minutes until the Toothpick Of Truth inserted in the center came out clean, and in the case of these muffins, about 30-33 minutes.  Let the muffins cool slightly.

Flip pan of hot muffins upside down onto a clean tea towel while the muffins cool.

These muffins didn’t rise much (probably because this recipe is intended for a loaf) but the flavor is worth the goofy looking muffin tops.

Zucchini Cranberry muffins