Simple Vegan Zucchini Muffins with Lemon Glaze

Introduction

Today I want to share with you one of my favorite summer treats- Vegan zucchini muffins with lemon glaze that is perfectly sweet and tangy.

Most summers growing up, we grew zucchini in our garden. In our growing zone, zucchini almost always did very well and we would end up with more zucchini than we knew what to do with. My mother was very creative with making zucchini recipes, including it in recipes like homemade lasagna, and creamy zucchini soup. My favorite recipe, however, was her homemade zucchini bread.

It doesn’t seem like a vegetable like zucchini should go in a sweet loaf bread, but it works so well and is SO delicious. Now that I don’t use eggs or dairy in my baked goods, I’ve had to learn how to recreate my favorite treats.

These vegan muffins use some of my favorite summer harvest ingredients, lemon and zucchini. They make a delicious companion to a cup of tea, or a picnic or Mother’s Day brunch. I hope you enjoy these muffins as much as I do!

The Ingredients

This recipe is centered around two primary ingredients- lemon and zucchini.

For simplicity, I listed the lemon components according to the number of lemons you need rather than specific amounts for lemon zest and lemon juice. I find that it is much easier to grocery shop if you know exactly how many lemons you need for a recipe.

For the zucchini, you want to shred it so that it can easily incorporate into the batter. You can either do this by hand using a box grater, or you can use a food processor with a grating attachment, which is much faster.

FAQs

Can I Use Frozen Zucchini?

You can use frozen shredded zucchini for this recipe. I have made these muffins with both fresh and frozen shredded zucchini and found that both ways work, however, if you use frozen zucchini, the texture of the muffins will be more moist.

How do I substitute egg?

For the egg replacer, I typically use either a flax egg or Ener-G brand egg replacer. In my experience, both of these methods provide consistently good results.

How to Make Vegan Zucchini Muffins with Lemon Glaze

The Vegan Zucchini Muffins

To make these muffins, you’ll want to first do some prep work. Preheat the oven, line a muffin tin with cupcake liners, prepare the egg replacer, zest the lemon and shred the zucchini.

Next, you will mix together the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Then you will add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until the ingredients are incorporated but there are still some lumps in the batter. I always recommend adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients to prevent waste of the wet ingredients, as they tend to stick more to the bowl.

Then you will spoon the batter evenly among 12 lined muffin tin cups, bake for 30 minutes, and allow to cool completely before adding the glaze.

The Lemon Glaze

To make the glaze, you will use both lemon juice and lemon zest as the flavoring agents. Use the juice and zest from 1/2 of a lemon and mix together with the powdered sugar and melted butter. The melted butter is important because without it, the glaze will taste too much like powdered sugar.

The desired result should be a glaze that is mostly opaque and runs slowly off a spoon. In order to get the right consistency you will start with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and add more powdered sugar tablespoon by tablespoon until the desired consistency is achieved. See the image below for stages of glaze consistency.

Finishing Up

Once the muffins are completely cooled, drizzle the lemon glaze over the muffins and allow the glaze to set. Enjoy!

If you enjoy this recipe, will you please leave a rating and review below? I’d love to hear what you think!

If you enjoyed this recipe, try this vegan banana bread recipe. Until next time!

-Jess