Yesterday I cooked up a batch of Lentil Vegetable soup to use on one of our activity-packed nights. Today it's zucchini bread bites (from Sprouted Kitchen which looks promising as a healthy lunchbox snack) and refilling our daily bread (challah loaves) inventory.
Over at the 101Cookbooks library we are cooking from the Sprouted Kitchen cookbook this month and next and I've had my eye on these (gluten-free) zucchini bread bites ever since I first had the chance to browse through my brand spanking new cookbook on the day it arrived at my doorstep a few weeks ago. Over at my house we've been known to enjoy a good chocolate zucchini cake or two. Jessica even requested that I bake one for her birthday party a couple of years back (I believe that one was a whole-wheat cake... it might have even been 100% whole-wheat. We all eagerly devoured it too as it was delicious)!
These little guys have quinoa flakes and oat flour as the base along with olive oil, maple syrup, cinnamon, 1 egg, shredded zucchini, natural cocoa powder, baking soda & powder, and mini chocolate chips (the recipe called for nuts but I am in a chocolatey mood rather than nutty today). When I read the recipe in preparation (Yay! I remembered to do this!), I saw that the batter needed to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes and I had a little bit of time before I needed to take the kids to Hebrew School this morning so it was the perfect opportunity to get these started. When I got home from dropping them off, I was able to take the batter from the fridge and scoop them onto the baking sheet (using my small cookie scoop) and then get them into the oven.
I had a bit of batter left over that I put into a mini-muffin tin (enough to fill 7 spaces).
They are not quite cooled but I had to dig into them to tell you how they taste (yes, see I'd do that for you... risk burning taste buds and mouth). The recipe note states that these are a cross between a cookie and a muffin... I'd add that they are like a cakey cookie. I LIKE these! I'm always skeptical, yet usually pleasantly surprised, by things that don't use wheat flour, merely because that's now how I'm used to cooking these last 20+ years. The maple syrup adds a great complexity and sweetness to these, though they are not overly sweet as a cookie would be. i think the new California olive oil I used adds something subtle to it as well. I'm eager to see what the kids think of this. I'm going to make sure I bring some with me when I pick them up from Hebrew today. I'm pretty sure we have a keeper here! The only thing I'm going to definitely get a hard time about is that they didn't get to help out with making them. Next time, children, next time.
