A new muffin recipe from the Muffin Queen?! Say less.
I’ve been wanting to create a new delicious baked treat using both pumpkin and zucchini that would be the perfect transition from summer into fall. Since yesterday was the first official day of fall (and the first 50-degree morning in Chicago) these incredible, fluffy pumpkin zucchini muffins are here at the perfect time.
If your favorite pumpkin muffins and spiced zucchini bread had a baby, it would be these beautiful muffins. They’re filled with all of the cozy fall flavors, plus little bites of crunchy nuts if that’s you’re vibe! Of course, I had to top them with a luscious cinnamon cream cheese frosting because life is too damn short not to.
Be sure to read the full post for tons of tips, ways to customize (who wants to add some chocolate?!) and more. Hope you love these ones!
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Ingredients in these pumpkin zucchini muffins
We’re getting super cozy with both pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices to really make that pumpkin flavor shine. Here’s what you’ll need to make the muffins:
- Zucchini: for extra moisture and a sneaky boost of veggies.
- Pumpkin puree: gotta have that real pumpkin puree, not pumpkin pie filling! Learn how to make your own pumpkin puree with this tutorial.
- Maple syrup: we’re naturally sweetening these muffins with some pure maple syrup.
- Eggs: you’ll need 2 eggs in this recipe to help the muffins bake up properly.
- Oil: you’ll also need melted and cooled coconut oil for moisture.
- Flour: we’re using a mix of oat flour and whole wheat pastry flour to keep the muffins super fluffy.
- Spices: hellooo delicious pumpkin pie spice! Don’t forget to add a pinch of salt, too.
- Baking staples: you’ll also need baking soda & vanilla extract. Learn how to make your own vanilla extract here!
- Optional mix-ins: I love adding chopped walnuts or pecans for crunch.
- For the frosting: we’re making a luscious cream cheese frosting using butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and a little milk.
Optional ingredient swaps
With all baking recipes, I recommend sticking with the recipe as closely as possible so that you get the best results. Here’s what I can suggest for ingredient swaps in these pumpkin zucchini muffins:
- Go nut free: simply omit the optional nuts and use melted butter or melted vegan butter instead of coconut oil.
- Make them dairy free: use a vegan butter stick such as Miyokos or Earth Balance and a vegan cream cheese for the frosting.
- Try a gluten free option: I have not tested this, but I think using all purpose gluten free flour in place of the whole wheat pastry flour will work well.
- Swap the pumpkin pie spice: if you don’t have any pumpkin pie spice on hand, you can sub 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon, ½ teaspoon nutmeg, ½ teaspoon ground ginger and ½ teaspoon allspice.
Learn how to make your own oat flour
Yes, you can easily make your own oat flour at home for these muffins by using rolled oats! Learn exactly how with this tutorial.
Can I make them vegan?
Unfortunately, I think using flax eggs to replace the regular eggs will make these muffins too soft and mushy. Try these vegan banana muffins instead!
Not feelin’ the frosting?
Feel free to mix in some chocolate chips instead for a delicious pumpkin-chocolate combo! Simply add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to the batter before baking.
Easy pumpkin zucchini muffins in 5 steps
- Prep your pan. Start by adding muffin liners to a muffin tin and spraying them with nonstick cooking spray. You can also preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- Mix the wet ingredients. Add your shredded, squeezed-out zucchini to a large bowl, and mix it with the rest of your wet ingredients until well combined.
- Add the dry. Mix in the flours, spices and baking staples using a wooden spoon. Fold in nuts or chocolate chips if you’d like!
- Bake & cool. Divide the batter into your muffin liners and bake ’em up! Be sure to cool them completely before adding the frosting.
- Frost & enjoy. Use an electric mixer or beater to beat together the frosting ingredients, spread them over the cooled muffins, and top with extra chopped nuts & cinnamon if you’d like. Then enjoy!
Tips for perfect pumpkin zucchini muffins
- Measure out your 1 cup of shredded zucchini BEFORE squeezing it out.
- Squeeze out ALL of the extra moisture from your zucchini. This will ensure that they bake up well and aren’t too moist.
- Be careful not to overmix the batter. Mix the flour into your wet ingredients until it’s just combined. If you overmix the batter your muffins may turn out dense and almost rubbery, which we don’t want.
Freeze them for later
These healthy pumpkin zucchini are freezer-friendly! Wrap muffins individually in freezer-safe bags or store them in a large freezer bag. When you’re ready to enjoy them, reheat for 30-45 seconds in the microwave or simply thaw them at room temperature. I recommend freezing them without the frosting.
More pumpkin recipes you’ll love
- Healthy Soft Pumpkin Cookies with Salted Maple Frosting
- Healthy Pumpkin Bread with Maple Glaze
- Nourishing Almond Butter Double Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins (that taste like CAKE!)
- Spinach Bacon Pumpkin Mac and Cheese
- Blow Ya Mind Pumpkin Cake with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting (gluten free!)
Get all of my pumpkin recipes here!
I hope you love these amazing pumpkin zucchini muffins! If you make them be sure to leave a comment and a rating so I know how you liked them. Enjoy, xo!
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Pumpkin Zucchini Muffins with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- For the wet ingredients:
- 1 cup shredded zucchini, from 1 medium zucchini*
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- ½ cup pure maple syrup
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled (or sub melted butter/vegan butter)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- For the dry ingredients:
- 1 cup oat flour (I used store bought oat flour)
- 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour*
- 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- For the optional mix-ins:
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
- For the frosting:
- 4 ounces cream cheese or vegan cream cheese, softened
- 2 tablespoons butter or vegan butter, at room temperature
- 3/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1-2 teaspoons milk of choice, to thin glaze
- For the topping:
- Extra chopped nuts
- Cinnamon for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with 12 muffin liners and grease the inside of the muffin liners with nonstick cooking spray to prevent sticking. This is critical to making sure the muffins don’t stick to the liners.
- Mix together the wet ingredients: shred and measure out zucchini, then place in a paper towel or cheese cloth and squeeze out all the excess moisture. Add zucchini to a large bowl, along with pumpkin puree, pure maple syrup, eggs, coconut oil (or sub melted butter/vegan butter) and vanilla extract. Mix until well combined.
- Mix in dry ingredients: Add oat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt to the bowl with the wet ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. Fold in nuts, if using.
- Time to bake: evenly divide batter into prepared liners. Bake for 23-27 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. After 5 minutes, remove muffins and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- Make the cinnamon cream cheese frosting: Beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and milk together on medium speed for a minute or until smooth. Spread over the muffins. Sprinkle chopped nuts and a little cinnamon, if desired to make them pretty. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Recipe by: Monique Volz // Ambitious Kitchen | Photography by: Eat Love Eats
28 comments
cant wait to make this soon for me for the frosting will use vegan cream cheese instead i never had pumpkin zucchini muffins before i love zucchini sooooooooooooooooooo much perfect for my after office snacks love your recipes as always brightens up my day everyday after work
will make this after work next week and sorry for not making your recipes as busy with work can i use zucchini instead only as pumpkin puree is dificult to find in Singapore
Hi, Ramya! I’d recommend trying these zucchini muffins instead 🙂 Enjoy!
I made these with gluten free flour today and they are great. I followed the recipe exactly as written and added walnuts and chocolate chips, no icing. They are the right amount of sweetness for me (I don’t like a sweet muffin). My batter was very thick so I was worried they would be dry but they turned out very nice. My first ever pumpkin recipe. You definitely have to like pumpkin!
So glad they came out great!!
I made these muffins early this morning. We are gluten free and also prefer things less sweet them most recipes [on the web sites I use] call for. I love your recipes and modify anything needed to work for us. For the oat flour [one of us is allergic to oats] I used 1 cup brown rice flour; for the wheat flour I used 1 cup G.F. paleo baking flour; for the nut s [ I cannot eat chunks of nuts] I used 1/3 cup hazel nut flour; used 1/3 cup pure maple syrup instead of 1/2 cup. did not do the frosting, used 1/4 cup chocolate chips. We all thought the muffins are great. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK IN BEHALF OF US ALL !!!!! I also made the the soft paleo pumpkin cookies today , only change i made is less coconut sugar in the recipe and also in the coconut sugar/ cinnamon I rolled the cookies in. they are great. THANK YOU AGAIN, Hilda
Thank you so much for the love, Hilda!! SO happy to hear they came out amazing with those subs 🙂
Made these this afternoon! I used cinnamon chips instead of chocolate chips, and added 1/2 tsp ground mace to the spice mixture. Otherwise, I made the recipe as written. I’ll post a picture when I have them for breakfast tomorrow with a smoothie. They are wonderful!
I saw your post in the FB group! Yay!! They looked amazing 🙂
Do you have any recommendations for baking when using the mini loaf pans for your recipes (for like banana bread and such) thank you 😊
How would you alter the oven temp and cooking time if I were to convert this to a loaf recipe? Thanks!
Hi! I haven’t tested it so I can’t be sure, sorry! Let me know if you try it 🙂
Hi! Will your paleo powdered sugar work instead of regular powder sugar for the frosting?
Yes, it should work well! Enjoy!
Delicious!
I subbed 1 cup almond flour for the pastry flour, added 1 more egg, added raisins and chopped walnuts and only 1/3 cup maple.
Topped with pumpkin seeds and Baked for 27 minutes.
Came out great, my toddler loves them!
Glad to hear that all worked well and that you both enjoyed them, Alexandra! Thanks so much for the review 🙂
i love this recipe! i’ve made it twice so far, and both batches were delicious! the second time i put a bit of a gingerbread twist on the recipe – i added a lot of fresh grated ginger and replaced some of the maple syrup with molasses. muffins were perfectly moist, subtly spicy, and not too sweet – soooo good!
Oooh that sounds fantastic! I need to try those additions 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Yummy! Fantastic as always…healthy but with a sweet twist with that fabulous frosting.
I’m so excited to make these! What would you change the bake time to if you wanted to make a loaf instead?
Hi! Yes I would bake it for 50-65 minutes instead, but keep a close eye on it. Let me know if you try it!
I made these today and substituted casein protein powder for the wheat pastry flour and took them out a few minutes sooner and they are moist and amazing. Thank you for another fantastic recipe! My dream is that I get a chef to make me all of your recipes daily!!
These were terrible. They didn’t rise, they just stayed a dense brick. Seemed like they needed a milk or liquid of sort. What a waste of a can of pumpkin and a fresh zucchini.
Hi Catherine- Sorry to hear these didn’t turn out for you. Few questions, were all your ingredients fresh? Did you change anything about the recipe? What was the consistency of the batter?
Fantastic! I’ve made these muffins three times in the last month. I didn’t have the oat flour or pastry flour on hand so I swapped out the same total amount of a blend of GF flours: almond flour, tapioca flour, coconut flour (see Downshiftology zucchini bread for the ratios of flour) and I added pecans and chocolate chips – fluffy, moist, delicious! One of the times I tried substituting regular all-purpose flour and they turned out quite rubbery – so maybe less flour? It was also a triple batch so that always makes it harder to make the batter right. Since the texture of the muffin was off, I decided to top them with the cream cheese frosting to try to salvage the bake. The frosting is SO yummy and added the spice and moisture necessary to save the rubbery muffins – they were all eaten up even though the texture wasn’t great!
This is a recipe I will return to again and again. I’d like to try it with the original recommended oat flour and pastry flour when I get those items in my pantry.
Thank you for sharing! So yummy, and a great way to use up garden zucchini!
Ahh this is so great to hear! I am glad you’re loving this recipe and it turned out fabulous for you!
These pumpkin muffins are packed with flavor! I swapped the frosting for some chocolate chips and that added the perfect sweetness/texture addition for me. I will definitely make these again. As always, thanks for sharing your delicious recipes!
Amazing! I am so glad you’re loving these muffins, my favorite fall treat! 🧡