Last week, into my home came a zucchini the size of a football. While I love the stuff, my husband hates it. Loathes it, in fact. And just as I was dreaming up creative ways to use it — should I stuff a chicken? core it and bake it like a boat with a cargo of meats and marinara? — out fell one of those food-zine newspaper inserts.
What initially caught my eye was a recipe for watermelon gazpacho with herb oil (which I vow to try despite the disgusted looks I get when I string together “watermelon” and “gazpacho” in a sentence). But as I flipped through it, Ii found their zucchini special and a recipe for that standard zucchini overabundance user upper ubiquitous to potlucks and garden gatherings everywhere.
Everyone has their own zucchini bread recipe, each with slight variations, nuts, other fruits, different portions of this and that.
I’ve made zucchini bread before, but it was a long time ago and it came out way too bitter. But I’ve had some good zucchini bread courtesy of our arts and entertainment reporter, and figured I’d give it another try. The magazine’s recipe looked pretty simple and pulled in plenty of sugar.
I made it twice, turning the second batch into muffins (which I cooked for 25 minutes instead of the load time of 1 hour). It turned out cakey and moist and sugary, so here, tested and approved, it is to share.
What’s your favorite zucchini (or other vegetable) bread recipe?
Zucchini Bread
from Relish
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 cups shredded, unpeeled zucchini undrained
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Preheat oven to 325-degres. Spray a 9X5 loaf pan with cooking spray and dust with flour.
Combine oil, sugar, eggs and zucchini in a large bowl. In a seperate bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Gradually add to zucchini mix. Beat 3 minutes with a mixer on medium speed. Scrape batter into a prepared pan.
Bake 1 hour or until inserted knife comes out clean. Serves 10.
The Relish link above has calorie and nutritional information.
