Zucchini Muffins

There's been a lot of talk on Facebook amongst my American friends recently about the virtues of Zucchini Muffins (courgettes to those of us in England), so I thought I'd try a little experiment, by combining the ever-so-succesful oat pancake recipe, the half-syn roulade recipe and a traditional carrot cake recipe, but substituting courgettes for the carrots and baking it in muffin cases rather than cake tins. I peeled the courgette because the skin was a little blemished, but this should not be necessary. Of course, you may want to peel it to avoid having green bits in your muffins.

The result was way better than I had hoped for. The cake was light, moist and tasty, with the consistency of a bread pudding, and the taste was very spicy and fruity. 

 

Serves 4*

1 Syn on Extra Easy**
** Providing you use the oats as your Healthy Extra B

You could, of course, omit the sultanas and make the cake almost syn free, as there is only ½ syn in the baking powder. I thought the sultanas were worth the syns though.

70g porridge oats

1 tub Müllerlight toffee yogurt

2-3 tbsp sugar free appleade

1 large courgette, grated

½ cup sweetener or to taste

2 tsp mixed spice

20g sultanas (total 3 syns)

2 eggs, separated

1 tsp baking powder (total ½ syns)

Start the day before you want to eat the cakes. Soak the oats in the yogurt with 1 tbsp appleade, the spices and sweetener overnight. In a separate small bowl, soak the sultanas in just enough appleade to cover them.

The next day, whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the baking powder. I find it is best at this stage to taste the oat mixture and adjust the spices or sweetener if necessary. Mix together the oats, grated courgettes and sultanas with the egg yolks and stir thoroughly. Carefully fold in the egg whites and pour into 12 muffin cases. Bake at 200°C for 10-15 minutes until a skewer comes out clean and the top feels spongy. Mine took a bout 18 minutes in total.