Low Fat Vegan Zucchini Muffins

I became a vegetarian my freshman year in college and remained one for about 10 years. At some point I started eating some poultry and seafood again, but never went back to red meat or pork. When earning my Masters degree, my research concentration was cardiovascular physiology, so am very familiar with how important a whole food, unprocessed diet is to proper functioning of our bodies and our health. However, knowing this and living by it in recent years have been two very different things. 

I have been guilty of going to the Chic-Fil-A drive through after taking the kids to gymnastics, or whipping up a batch of tacos from an Old El Paso kit. I would try to lose those extra pounds doing diets involving powdered shakes and soups, or eating Lean Cuisines and drinking diet pop. I knew it wasn't healthy and it nagged at me in the back of my mind, but I was doing what I had to do as a busy mom, right??? Problem is, I still had the extra pounds, was tired and my allergies were kicking my butt.

I had heard about the documentary Forks Over Knives and finally got around to watching it. The case presented and the overwhelming scientific evidence that a whole-foods, plant-based diet can basically save your life really affected me. Especially being high-risk myself with family members from both sides suffering from strokes, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. I decided to give veganism the old college try. I am not saying I am going to have a perfect diet, but I am going to make a real effort to follow a low-fat, vegan diet.

I think my biggest challenge will be getting the kids to have open minds about new foods. They will happily eat a vegetarian corn dog as long as they don't know it is not an actual hot dog in there. I am not making my kids vegan too, but do want to cut out the processed foods from their diets. I figured muffins would be a pretty safe bet for the little ones. They love zucchini bread so I searched for vegan zucchini muffin recipes. Most of them had a lot of oil, but I was able to adapt a recipe for oil-free Chocolate Zucchini Muffins from Happy Herbivore to make these muffins and they turned out FANTASTIC! 

LOW FAT VEGAN ZUCCHINI MUFFINS:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 Cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
• 1 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
• 3/4 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1 Large Banana
• 1/2 Cup Applesauce, Unsweetened
• 1 Cup Raw Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1 Cup Shredded Zucchini (about 1 large zucchini)
• 1/4 Cup Vanilla Rice Milk (or other non-diary milk)

Instructions:

• Mash banana in a large bowl and stir in applesauce. Add sugar and mix well. Add vanilla rice milk, vanilla and zucchini. Stir until well combined.
• In a separate bowl, whisk together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon).
• Slowly add dry ingredients to wet and stir until completely moistened.
• Line muffin tin with paper liners and fill 3/4 full.
• Bake in 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until toothpick poked in center comes out clean.

Note: These were very sweet so you could probably decrease the amount of sugar to 3/4 cup if desired.

Bon Appetit!
-Blythe

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