Lemon Poppyseed Zucchini Muffins

Although, I guess it’s fair to say that I’m not a MEGA zucchini lover, so maybe I should just be asking for all the Lovers of Excellent Muffins and Sweet Summer Flavors to please stand up?

If you are a) a lover of zucchini, or b) a lover of cold muffins straight out the fridge that are dense, moist, and so texturally perfect that you could basically forget all your problems for at least three seconds while you go into Muffin Bliss Land? Then yes, you are in the right place. These muffins are that.

These zucchini muffins are my idea of textural perfection. They are beautifully puffy, but not overly fluffy on the inside. Can we appreciate the difference here? The zucchini keeps things moist, as does the olive oil (!!!), and the brown sugar gets a little extra caramely so you have that barely-sticky browned crown of a muffin ridge, and then you get just the slightest textural interest from flecks of lemon zest and crunchy poppyseeds. That balance between dense, sticky, and rounded puffy top is just pure magic.

SIGN ME UP.

These muffins are actually modeled after one of my favorite quick bread recipes slash “cake” that is appropriate to eat anytime of day. Remember that one? I just wanted a smaller batch of that exact thing in muffin form for easy snacking, and voila. They worked beautifully.

If you’ve made the bread aka cake before, fair warning that it is a tad bit more dense than these newbie muffins are. If you want to replicate that original bread aka cake level of density, just omit the baking soda. But we’ll talk more about that in the recipe notes.

For now, please feast your eyes on the start of this golden crunchy brown sugar meets olive oil meets fresh lemon zest batter. THE FRESHNESS. Hold me.

And now we add the fresh zucchini, which has been shredded and gently squeezed out over the sink in a very elementary hand-held method because we are the type of people who squeeze zucchini shreds with our own two hands, thank you very much.

Not to be weird or anything, but I know some of you are like me so let’s just take a moment together to appreciate that this batter is lovely.

Bake into muffins…

Go ahead and eat one while it’s still way too hot.

And then store the rest in the fridge for later. I know, you think I’m so weird, but they get REALLY delicious as they densify in the fridge. Yes, densify. Normally not what you want in your muffins, but for this one, you definitely do. There’s so much zucchini and olive oil in there that these are going to stay moist and delish no matter how dense they are.

You really don’t need butter on these. Promise. There is so much good flavor here already and the texture needs no help at all.

But, I guess if you really wanted to put your best foot forward, a tiny shmear of butter would not be a disappointment.

This lemony, caramely brown, zucchini-packed muffin, cold out of the fridge in the morning with a mug of hot coffee?

I don’t know, you guys. It might be my dream start to an August morning.