Are You There, God? It’s Me, a Dark Chocolate Zucchini Muffin Addict

Are you there, God? It’s me—no, not Margaret, but Big Bear Lake’s professional dirt walker, the Hungry Mountaineer.

How am I doing? Well, let me tell you: eight months of chronic ankle pain has been hellish for this once-athletic, once mountain-goat-level trail runner. Do I feel envy when I see other runners spring past me these days? You bet your ass I do. Do I feel fear? Absolutely—how much worse is this ankle pain going to get? But being Big Bear Lake’s official guide to the wilds, I just keep chugging along.

And yes, sometimes I drown my sorrows in Pinot Grigio while hanging out with my forest cats in the backyard. But more often than not, I drown them in this, best Chocolate Zucchini Muffin recipe. Because apparently, zucchini season means everyone at the community garden decides to passive-aggressively gift you wheelbarrows full of the stuff. Nothing says friendship like a bag of oddly suggestive-looking gourds.

As a girl child of the ’90s, I was Judy Blume–obsessed. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is officially over fifty years old now (yeah, let that one sink in while you Google wrinkle creams). Who knew Judy’s books would spark my lifelong obsession with reading and, eventually, inspire me to sit down with a laptop and ramble about the best Chocolate Zucchini Muffin recipe on the internet?

This summer was so packed—running Big Bear Lake’s best Jeep tours, wrangling tourists, and pretending my ankle wasn’t plotting my downfall—that it’s a miracle I found time to read at all. But I did! Somehow, between May and the end of August, I finished 13 books. Wow!

And here you have it: The five best books I couldn’t put down all summer long

1. False Witness, Karin Slaughter

2. The Expat Affair, Kimberly Belle

3. Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeney

4. Clever Little Things, Helena Echlin

5. The Secrets She Keeps, Michael Robotham

When Life Gives You Zucchini, Add Chocolate (and Pray)

As I drove tourists all over Big Bear Lake’s alpine forest dirt roads this past weekend, I snapped an epic photo of the God rays breaking through the thunderclouds. I couldn’t help but think: maybe this was a wink from above. Not just about the resilience it takes to build a small business from scratch—but maybe also about the healing power of the best Chocolate Zucchini Muffin recipe. Divine intervention? Possibly. Or maybe it’s just carbs, coconut oil and cocoa powder doing their holy work.

Either way, here’s the truth: you can keep your kale chips and your overpriced oat milk lattes. I’ll be over here with my suspiciously shaped magnum zucchinis, baking muffins that are basically vegetables in disguise.

And if God’s light wants to shine down on that? Even better.

“I know you are there, God, I know you wouldn’t have missed this for anything,” Judy Blume, 1970

The very best Chocolate Zucchini Muffin recipe

3 cups grated zucchini

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

2/3 cups dark chocolate Hershey’s powder

3/4  cups of honey

2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 cups of milk

2 eggs, at room temperature

3/4 cup cake flour

1/2 cup of coconut flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

To make the most delicious homemade zucchini muffins, First cream the melted coconut oil, the honey and the vanilla. Add in the eggs, then mix in the zucchini. Now mix in the milk and then your dry ingredients. Pour this into muffin tins and bake at 350°F for 20-25 minutes.

Have you ever had a better muffin chock full of homegrown veggies?