These Easy Savory Cheddar Cheese Muffins with Zucchini are packed with tangy cheddar cheese and tender shreds of zucchini suspended in savory muffin batter.
Enjoy these cheddar cheese muffins warm from the oven with butter as part of your breakfast. They’re also great as appetizers, for picnics, or fillers for your lunch boxes.
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❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
- These cheddar muffins are easy to make and only take 35 minutes. These ingredients are mostly pantry-staple items too!
- The shredded zucchini adds extra nutritional value to this cheese muffins recipe and will keep the muffins moist.
- These savory zucchini muffins can be enjoyed as a mini muffin appetizer, snacks, lunch box fillers, or a side dish to soup or just about any meal!
Don’t know what to do with leftover zucchini in your kitchen?! These easy savory cheese muffins with zucchini offer you a delicious solution, and your family will be begging for more!
🛒 Ingredients
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Note: The full list of this recipe ingredients with their amounts and options are in the recipe card below.
- cheddar cheese -- we like using the sharp variety for flavoring reasons.
- zucchini - be sure to drain as much liquid as you can from the vegetable.
- Italian Seasoning -- the fresher your seasoning the more powerful it tastes.
🗒 Instructions
Note: This is an overview of the instructions. The full instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Grate the zucchini with a box grater and squeeze all excess water out.
- Add the all purpose flour to a mixing bowl.
- Add milk to a separate medium bowl.
- Add the egg to the milk.
- Add the baking powder and Italian seasoning to the bowl with flour.
- Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.
- Add the grated cheese and shredded zucchini.
- Spoon the muffin batter into greased mini muffin pans.
- Bake the cheddar cheese muffins for 20 minutes at 375F or until the top of the muffins are golden brown and the center is done.
- Allow the muffins to cool for a few minutes in the muffin pans before transferring them to a wire rack.
🔪 Equipment
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You’ll need the following items to make this recipe successfully.
🤔 FAQs
These are the questions we are most frequently asked about making these cheddar muffins.
Muffin recipes typically call for fat, such as butter, oil, or eggs. It's the fat content that adds moisture to muffins. The milk and egg add moisture to these muffins. The grated zucchini also contains moisture.
It can be if you already have most pantry-staple ingredients, such as milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder.
You should always read the package directions to find the necessary ingredients you need to add. Then many muffin packages give you flavor variations. If you're making savory muffins, fresh herbs, seasoning or spices.
Adding too much baking powder, flour, or over-mixing can cause these muffins to quickly rise and then collapse, making them dense. Be sure to accurately measure in the ingredients and don't mix too long.
Using high-quality and fresh ingredients will give you the best results.
Here are some mistakes to avoid:
1. Don't overmix the batter.
2. Forgetting to grease the muffin pans or tins.
3. Overfilling the cups with muffin batter.
4. Leaving the baked muffins in the pan for too long.
5. Not paying attention to the baking time -- either over or under baking.
👩🏻🍳 Tips
- Remove excess water from the freshly grated zucchini by wrapping the zucchini in a clean kitchen towel or cheesecloth and squeezing the water out over a large bowl or the kitchen sink.
- Don’t line the muffin tray cups with paper liners, as the cheese in these muffins tends to stick to the liners.
- Make two batches of these muffins and freeze half for quick and easy snacks or to fill lunch boxes.
- Check the expiry date of the baking powder to ensure a good rise in these savory muffins.
📚 Variations
- Use gluten-free flour such as Bob’s Red Mill for a gluten-free muffin recipe.
- I’ve used non stick cooking spray to grease the muffin cups, but you could also use some butter.
- Mozzarella cheese or another cheese can replace the sharp cheddar cheese in these muffins.
- Spinach can be used instead of zucchini.
- Add other ingredients to this cheese muffin recipe, such as corn, onion, crumbled feta cheese, ham, or jalapeno!
- I’ve used a mini muffin pan, but you could make regular-sized muffins instead of a standard muffin tin.
🥫 Storage
These zucchini puffs are best enjoyed immediately after they have been made. They can be stored for a few days in an airtight container at room temperature for 2 months in the freezer.
Reheat leftover zucchini muffins in the microwave for about 10 seconds.
📗 Related Recipes
- Crispy Air Fryer Zucchini Chips - These zucchini chips are another great appetizer or side dish option using your trusty air fryer machine to get a perfect crispy texture!
- Taco Stuffed Zucchini Boats - If you love stuffing vegetables, you’ll go crazy for these Mexican-inspired stuffed zucchini.
- Creamy Zucchini Sauce - If you thought you’d exhausted all ways to use zucchini, think again! This creamy zucchini sauce is perfect to combine with tender pasta for a fresh and comforting meal.
🍽 Serve with
These zucchini bites can be enjoyed as a delicious appetizer with this Spicy Cheese Dipping Sauce and Ranch dressing.
These cheddar cheese muffins can also be served for breakfast with butter, as a light meal with salad, or paired with soup and stew.
📞 Chiacchierata (chat)
Do you ever wonder what to do with all those beautiful zucchini everyone wants to give you? These muffins are a nice change from the usual sweet zucchini bread or muffins. The miniature size makes the ideal for a snack or a quick afternoon treat.
I like placing them next to a bowl of soup, a fresh summer salad, or in lunch boxes. There were times when the kiddos would come home from school and be starving after their sport's practice. These little zucchini puffs would help the hangries. Even though the children are grown we now keep them available for the grandsons.
Tutti a tavolo, è pronto!
What's new? Check out my All Our Way Store on Amazon. We'll be adding more items we love and use or wish we had to make cooking fun and easy.
📝 Recipe Card
These cheddar cheese muffins with shredded zucchini are moist and fluffy, loaded with sharp cheddar flavor, and perfect as a delicious breakfast food, mini muffin appetizer, a filler for lunch boxes, or a tasty side dish.
If you love this recipe please give it 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
📖 Recipe
Easy Savory Cheddar Cheese Muffins With Zucchini
Ingredients
- ¾ cup all purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoons Italian Seasoning
- ¾ cup milk
- 1 egg
- ½ cup cheddar cheese shredded
- 1 cup zucchini grated
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
For the zucchini:
- After you grate the zucchini, you'll need to get rid of the excess water.
- Wrap the zucchini in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze the excess water out.
- Make sure you're holding the towel over the sink or a large enough bowl to catch all the water. You don't want a mess.
How to prepare the puffs:
- In a large mixing bowl, combine with a whisk flour, baking powder and Italian Seasoning.
- In another bowl, combine the egg with the milk. Then add to the dry ingredients and combine.
- Add the shredded zucchini and grated cheese to the batter and mix to combine.
- Spoon into mini muffin pans that have been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.
- Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 20 minutes or until the center is done.
Notes
- Remove excess water from the freshly grated zucchini by wrapping the zucchini in a clean kitchen towel or cheesecloth and squeezing the water out over a large bowl or the kitchen sink.
- Don’t line the muffin tray cups with paper liners, as the cheese in these muffins tends to stick to the liners.
- Make two batches of these muffins and freeze half for quick and easy snacks or to fill lunch boxes.
- Check the expiry date of the baking powder to ensure a good rise in these savory muffins.
- Use gluten-free flour such as Bob’s Red Mill for a gluten-free muffin recipe.
- I’ve used non stick cooking spray to grease the muffin cups, but you could also use some butter.
- Mozzarella cheese or another cheese can replace the sharp cheddar cheese in these muffins.
- Spinach can be used instead of zucchini.
- Add other ingredients to this cheese muffin recipe, such as corn, onion, crumbled feta cheese, ham, or jalapeno!
- I’ve used a mini muffin pan, but you could make regular-sized muffins instead of a standard muffin tin.
