These healthy zucchini muffins are made in a blender with a base of oats and zucchini: no flour required! They’re cinnamon-scented with just the right sweetness.

We have a little problem with muffins over here: they’re usually cupcakes parading as breakfast food! So many muffin recipes are sickly sweet and a bomb of refined flour and sugar. Not that we’re against the occasional splurge on this type of food. But as we get older, it’s more of a practical matter for us. Without fail, after eating most muffins, we get a sugar crash and a stomach ache. SO! We’ve created a template for a healthy muffin, using rolled oats and no flour! The oats make it like eating a bowl of oatmeal instead of a cupcake. And guess what? They taste incredible too! Come learn the secrets of our healthy zucchini muffins.

How to make healthy zucchini muffins

OK, so how is it possible to have a muffin made only of oats, with no refined flour? We unintentionally created a gluten free muffin, and if you eat gluten free, you’ll know that baked goods almost always call for unique types of flour. But in this case, the muffins work with only rolled oats. Yep, just plain old oats! The secret? They’re blender muffins. And they’re based on these Healthy Banana Muffins, which have become a fan favorite.

Because these muffins are made in the blender, it blends down the oats into a flour, like the oat flour you can find in the store. But luckily, adding eggs, a little oil, shredded zucchini, and a bit of sugar, the batter transforms magically into muffins: no weird flours required! It’s truly like eating a bowl of oatmeal. Well, one with a bit of egg, sugar and shredded zucchini on the side — which would be pretty unpleasant on its own. Luckily blending up the ingredients makes a healthy zucchini muffin that the entire family can enjoy!

Here’s how to make healthy zucchini muffins:

Blend together eggs, rolled oats, neutral oil, sugar, vanilla extract, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, and shredded zucchini.
Add ½ cup additional shredded zucchini and diced apple (optional).
Pour into muffin cups. Top with additional rolled oats.
Bake for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Allow to cool and enjoy!

Want more oatmeal muffins? Try our Apple Oatmeal Muffins and Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Using zucchini helps cut oil

Zucchini is often used as a replacement for oil in baked goods, since it’s much lower calorie than oil and brings in moisture! For that reason, these zucchini muffins have a fairly low oil content: only ¼ cup for 10 muffins. This equates to a little over 1 teaspoon of oil per muffin. Thanks, zucchini!

Most of zucchini is water, so it disappears right into cakes, muffins and breads, leaving the baked good perfectly hydrated. One of our favorite recipes for using shredded zucchini is in this Favorite Gluten Free Chocolate Cake, which helps to keep it moist and “healthyish”. We’d recommend trying it if you’re looking for a sweet treat!

Just sweet enough

When creating this recipe, Alex and I tried to keep the sugar to a minimum. It is, of course, healthy zucchini muffins! At the same time, we were balancing the need to create a muffin that tastes like what people expect of a zucchini muffin.

As I mentioned above, we based this on our fan favorite Healthy Banana Muffins recipe. That recipe uses maple syrup as the sweetener, and it works great! However in testing this recipe, we found that that structural properties of sugar were necessary to create the right right texture. So as much as we love using natural sweeteners like maple, it just didn’t work for this recipe! We went with regular refined sugar, but you can use any type of dry sugar you like: turbinado sugar, coconut sugar, and so forth.

Serving these healthy zucchini muffins

These healthy zucchini muffins freeze well, so they’re actually perfect for both packing in lunches and entertaining. We recently used them for breakfasts while we had house guests. And we’re planning to pack them in Larson’s school lunches in the fall (we did lots last year with our Banana Bread Muffins). In all cases, they’re great slathered with a bit of peanut butter, cashew butter or almond butter for added protein to keep you full.

More zucchini recipes

Love cooking with zucchini? Us too. Here are a few more zucchini recipes you might enjoy:

Perfect Sauteed Zucchini How to make the BEST sauteed zucchini that will have everyone talking! Ten minutes in a hot pan makes this green vegetable truly irresistible.
Squash and Zucchini Casserole A cozy summer side dish, it’s topped with crunchy breadcrumbs and Parmesan.
Roasted Zucchini and Squash or Grilled Zucchini and Squash Bake or grill them until tender with Italian herbs: perfection!
Best Zucchini Bread It’s got the best flavor: cinnamon-scented, with just the right sweetness.
Grilled Zucchini Turns out, zucchini is at its best when it’s grilled. Throw thin slices on the grill and it comes out tender and charred, with an irresistibly smoky flavor!
Chocolate Zucchini Cake This chocolate zucchini cake recipe comes out so rich and chocolaty! It’s a family favorite that happens to be dairy free and gluten free.

This healthy zucchini muffins recipe is…

This healthy zucchini muffins recipe is vegetarian, gluten free, and dairy-free.