I used to love to bake, but then my oven started acting weird and unpredictable, and nothing would ever bake right.  I pretty much stopped.  Now that I have an oven that works, though, I’m getting back to baking.  And with my zucchini from Bountiful Baskets (and then zucchini from a neighbor) I wanted to find something yummy and somewhat healthy that wouldn’t involve heating up the kitchen too much.

This Zucchini-Carrot Muffin uses more sugar than I would like, but it tastes so very good and everyone in my family absolutely loves it.  I used unsweetened applesauce that I had made from the last of my Gala apple box, but canned applesauce works too. This recipe was the first time I had used the vanilla extract I made last spring using vanilla beans from my Tropical pack.  Yum!

My family likes the colorful look of the orange and green, so I used a fairly coarse shred.  Shredding them finely will make them disappear into the muffin.  I also tend to try to fill the muffin cups based on how many people I’m serving.  My family thinks three smaller muffins is more food than two slightly bigger ones, so I usually go for filling the cups about 2/3 full, and getting either 18 or 21 muffins, depending on whether or not my husband will be around.

I ended up freezing shredded zucchini-carrot mixtures in individual bags so that we can easily make up more of these.  I like them for a quick, on-the-go breakfast, or something to toss into a packed lunch.