MSC: Zucchini Spice Cupcakes

Ok so I have to admit, I was not super keen on the idea of zucchini cupcakes. I am not first in line when someone breaks out the zucchini bread nor do I like how sneakily familiar it looks to my old standby favorite, banana bread. Grated veggies don't have much room in my sweet palate. Esp in cupcake form, I tend to think that veggie cupcakes are almost like muffins but with frosting as an extra perk.



However, when I looked at the recipe, I saw that the 'spice' part was actually kind of like a pumpkin cupcake, which is one of my favorite things. Hey I never said I was consistent. So I thought I could play up the spice and lessen the zucchini, just in case.



I liked that Martha's recipe didn't have some amazingly ridiculous amt of sugar in it, veggie cupcake recipes tend to do this so that you don't know you are eating anything resembling an originally healthy vegetable, and it makes it more palatable for sweet tooths like myself. I didn't like that this recipe had no milk or liquid in it. What kind of cupcake doesn't have a liquid? The zucchini did add moisture but I added about 1/3c of milk and the result was a perfectly moist muffin. Not too dense.

I ommitted the nuts because our built-in pantry is open to the rest of the house and the moths just love my nuts. Even the sealed, as in haven't even been opened bags. So I had to toss them all just about a week ago and have not restocked. But when I do they are going in a diff area of the kitchen, something with doors. I hate moths.


Am I a muffin?????

In leiu of the nuts I added choco chips to some of them, just to see what kind of flavor that added. I also halfded (between half and a third) the recipe and got 8 huge cupcakes. Since I am traveling tomorrow, I took them to work today and let the masses over-consume. The feedback was that the cupcakes were really good, extremely moist and a good texture. Because I went nuts on the spice, people liked that you couldn't taste the zucchini and it was more like a spice cake. That works for me!


Or a luscious cupcake???? Identity crisis.

Thanks to my sweet baking buddy for some fresh Anderson Valley zucchini hand-delivered to the house so that I could bake these babies. XOXO LUVYA. And check out the other Martha Stewart Cupcake Club blog bakers at the new site. And if you don't have the book, buy it at Amazon. Enjoy!