Five Spice Muffins

Approved by a picky 6 yr old! Thank you 🙂

definitely will make these often…

My family loves this, I use mini muffin pans and get about 24 muffins.

I make this every year for Christmas. In the summer I grate up zucchini from my garden in the food processor, measure out 2 cup increments and put it in freezer bags. I don’t use the boiling water because freezing the zucchini makes them soft. Leaving out the water makes the recipe perfect for high altitude. Thaw it out and you’re ready to go! The coriander gives a nice flavor and the sunflower seeds are just a little different. I make mini loaves instead of muffins. Always a hit!

Made this recipe yesterday. I only had white whole wheat flour on hand, so used that. Replaced sunflower seeds with chopped pecans (personal preference). Cut sugar back to about 1 cup, mixed together white and brown sugar. Used cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, as these were the spices I had on hand. Cut the salt back to just about 1/8 t, the recipe amount called for seemed like much too much? Added some fresh lemon zest to the batter. As others mentioned, my batter was a bit too dry, so I had some heavy whipping cream on hand (why not??) and stirred in, just a drizzle of it, till the batter seemed moist enough. I had to bake this in a 9×9 in pan, as I could not find my muffin form. We ended up with kind of a cake or Zucchini Bread. But, it was just a bit dry. Great flavor though. It may have been the reduction of sugar AND the whole wheat flour that contributed to the dryness. So, next time, I think I’ll increase the amount of shredded zucchini or even add some shredded carrot as others did, to get the moisture level up, but still keep it healthy.

Delicious! I made them vegan by substituting ground flax seed and water for the eggs. Also used applesauce for the oil. Very tasty and nice combination of seasoning/spices.

We loved this recipe. I used frozen zuchinni and added all the liquid too. I also added about 1 cup if mixed chopped dried fruit along with the raw sunflower seeds – really nice and moist and perfectly spiced.

These did indeed smell spicy as they were baking! In fact, when I tried one I was surprised to find they weren’t as spicy as the aroma led me to imagine they’d be. Not that that’s a bad thing! These are, in fact, delicately spiced (I used all spices as directed) and just barely sweet, which is actually refreshing for a muffin (if I want cake, I’ll eat cake). However, if you like a sweeter muffin you could easily add a little more sugar. I used candy coated/chocolate covered sunflower seeds which I’ve learned bleed in wet batters! (But are great in cookie doughs) While the sunflower seeds were “ok,” I think I’d rather have raisins, dates or other dried fruit that might add that hint of sweetness and contrasting flavor that these missed for me. These are definitely flavorful, moist and bake up with pretty, domed tops. I left some of them as is and glazed the rest with a mixture of powdered sugar and lemon juice.

Exceptional! The flavor of these muffins is outstanding! I used sucanat instead of white sugar and baked jumbo muffins instead of regular sized. They even looked perfect with high domed tops. I must admit I did not use the sunflower seeds because I didn’t have any, but I did add a few blueberries. I will be making these often! In fact I may just use this recipe for my zucchini bread as well.It is that good! The spices make the muffin!

Excellent base recipe but modified it more than usual- used 1/3 Cup buttermilk, 1.5 Tb oil,used 3 cups WW flour, added 3 TB gluten, 1 TB baking powder; also next time, will reduce the clove as it did not please my little guy; the spice mix was really nice as was the added veggies – thank you for the recipe

I believe these would be much better without the sunflower seeds. Will try them without next time.

My family fell in love with these muffins, even my finicky boys who hate vegetables. I didn’t tell them that there was zucchini in them and they couldn’t tell (and I never told them either). This is an easy way to get another serving of vegies into everyones diet without much trouble. Thank you for this great recipe.

very good–lite & none of the dense zucchini taste/texture–will most certainly be making these again. only change was I used white whole wheat flour.

These were delicious and pretty easy to make. I used my food processor to grate zucchini and that made it fast and easy!

Delicious, chopped up a small bag of mixed seed, nuts and fruit and added it to the muffin dough. Even my picky eater loved these muffins and said they are the best ever, and she got the sevret ingredient vegetables.

I cut this recipe down to twelve servings. I used hot brewed Tazo chai tea instead of plain water. I also used whole wheat flour, pecans instead of sunflower seeds (only because my family isn’t big on sunflower seeds), I cut the salt down to a pinch and the sugar down to a half cup (we’re really watching our salt/sugar intake) and I kept all the spices and vanilla to a teaspoon for the twelve muffins. After folding the wet ingredients into the dry, the mixture was still too dry. I needed to add another 3/4 cup of liquid to get it to combine and look like muffin batter. I did add 3/4 cup of lowfat buttermilk. The smell of these baking is really out of this world. All of us really enjoyed them, though mine did turn out a little dry. It could just be because I did cut the recipe back or maybe I baked them too long or overmixed them due to the not enough liquid. Still, a great muffin. I think next time, I might add a half cup of organic raisins in the shredded zucchini step. Keeping the spices high in this recipe really negated the need for extra fat or sugar. This is a really flavorful zucchini muffin.

SO GOOD. I made a healthier variety with 1 c white rice flour, 1 3/4 spelt flour and 1 tsp xanthan gum. Also reduced the sugar to 2/3c and they were plenty sweet. The spices override it all and they are a fabulous mix!

Wow, these taste great, I love the spices. I substituted 2 small spoonfuls of honey for the sugar – if you don’t like overly sweet, the honey gives it just enough. I also used egg whites only. They turned out great, I recommend this!

Hmmm…I’m more than a little puzzled as to what the “5th” spice is!! Vanilla? Sunflower seeds? Oh well, no matter, even without a fifth spice, these muffins are aMAZing! With no coriander in my spice rack, I decided to substitute ginger along with a smidgen of dried orange peel. The sunflower seeds were replaced with raisins [I’ll try dried cranberries next time just for the change], oil was replaced with 1/3 cup of plain yogurt & 1/4 cup of ground flaxseed, cut back on the sugar to 1/4 cup of white & 1/2 cup of brown [& the muffins were Plenty sweet enough] & finally added a large shredded carrot as one reviewer suggested. The verdict? Every blessed muffin was gone at work before our first coffee break!! I gave the recipe to 4 co-workers by the end of the day!! That’s it! This recipe shouldn’t be called five Spice…it’s Five Star Muffins!!! ;-DDDD

I missed an ingredient the first time I made these, but the second time they were WONDERFUL. I also skipped the sunflower seeds, but these are great because I can make a large batch, and they freeze really well. Take a couple out of the freezer just before going to bed, and they’re a great healthy grab-and-go pick. For an even healthier variety, replace the eggs and oil with a small can of pumpkin- in this recipe, you won’t even taste the pumpkin, and will cut down the fat content even more.

Very warm flavor but I think the sunflower seeds mess up the texture and mouth-feel. I like sunflower seeds and was excited to use them, but it just didn’t seem to work here. Golden raisins would be a good fit. Warm them before serving for extra coziness!