Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

We recently moved into a new house, and while it was a local move, it was still quite a bit of work, hence no new recipes from me for a bit. But, everything’s finally unpacked and I’m back in the kitchen! Our new place has a great backyard, where I recently discovered some late-season mega zucchini that the previous tenant must’ve planted. These bad boys are each at least a foot long!

I was able to put a (slight) dent in our backyard bounty with a batch of tasty muffins. Note: if you’re working with a bigger zucchini like I did for this recipe, you’ll want to quarter it lengthwise and remove seeds before grating.

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins 
1 cup white whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup grated zucchini
½ cup fat-free plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
¾ cup light brown sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
Cooking spray or butter, to grease muffin tin

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and grease muffin tin. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, cinnamon and nutmeg in large bowl and stir or whisk to blend. In another bowl, combine zucchini, yogurt, vanilla extract, egg, brown sugar and walnuts, stirring until blended. Add dry ingredients to the bowl with the zucchini mixture, stirring until everything’s mixed. Scoop ⅓ cup mix per muffin cup. Bake for 20 minutes.

Yields 9-10 muffins

Cookies made with persimmons and spice are quite nice

Our neighbor brought over some lovely hachiya persimmons a while back. I’d never cooked anything with persimmons, but figured the free fruit provided the perfect opportunity to try something new. I’ve had my mom’s persimmon cookie recipe stashed away for years. Glad I found it!

Persimmon Cookies 
1 cup sugar
1 cup shortening
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup hachiya persimmon pulp (from overly ripe fruit)
Butter or cooking spray (for cookie sheets)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. MIx first three ingredients in medium bowl. Whisk flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, salt and baking soda in separate, larger bowl. Stir contents of smaller bowl in with flour mix. Add raisins, walnuts and persimmon pulp. Thoroughly mix ingredients. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto greased cookie sheets. Bake cookies for roughly 15 minutes, until lightly brown.

May 19 Salad: Oh wow

Second course from our start-to-finish divine feast at The Kitchen was a Dungeness crab “cheesecake” and salad of lettuces, pickled shallots, cured lemons, walnuts and Castelvetrano olives, with some deep-fried soft-shell crab for good measure. My photo doesn’t do it justice.