As I write this, I am on day 10 of my quarantine. My feelings are wavering between incredulousness and boredom. But, I keep reminding myself it’s okay, maybe even good, to be bored. I’m doing myself and others a favor by staying indoors. Sam and I made a big shopping trip this morning, and I saw a pile of onions in the produce area. It’s been so long since I have seen an onion that I almost took a photo of it before remembering I shouldn’t touch my phone. I never thought in my lifetime I’d see something like this. But here we are.
Usually my coping strategies are cooking-related, but I’ve had no energy to develop new recipes, and ingredients are few and far between. This week, I decided to remake an old recipe that I love. It’s a simple zucchini muffin recipe with a pretty streusel topping. You’ll be happy to know it’s extremely forgiving. If you don’t have sour cream, you can use half and half, milk, or even buttermilk or yogurt. If you want to use wheat flour, be my guest. Just make sure you use half wheat half all purpose. I even ran out of brown sugar for the streusel and used granulated sugar. No big deal. Because what we really need right now is a little leniency. We are all going through a weird time. I’m with you! You aren’t alone.
See the full recipe below.
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- 1 stick of salted butter, softened
- ½ cup brown sugar packed
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 2 small zucchini, peeled and grated (you can use a box grater)
- ½ cup sour cream
- ¾ cup flour
- ⅓ cup brown sugar packed
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- 5 tbsp butter, cut into pieces
- Preheat the oven to 400 F.
- In a medium mixing bowl, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix together. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, add the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Mix with an electric mixter until creamy. Add the eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Add the sour cream and zucchini and mix well. Fold in the flour mixture, mixing gently until no clumps of flour remain.
- To make the crumb topping, add the flour, cinnamon, and brown sugar to a medium bowl. Add the butter and mix together with your hands or a fork until the butter is in small pieces and mixture resembles corn meal.
- In a 12 cup muffin tin, add muffin cups or grease. Add the mixture evenly to each cup until they’re ¾ full. Sprinkle the crumb mixture over each muffin. Bake for 20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
I am completely with you – it’s such a ridiculously weird time that we’re all going through right now! And I, for one, keep looking at my phone at the shops and then I need to wipe it down. Every single time. That said, these zucchini muffins look fabulous. I’d never think to streusel on muffins but I can see how beautifully this will work here. Thanks for much for sharing – I love baking with zucchini!
Haha agreed! Thank you so much! Streusel is great because the muffins aren’t super sweet, so it’s a nice little extra sweetener. I hope you make them!