Zucchini Bread

I have spent this entire month trying to convince myself that I like zucchini. I’ve always passed it off as just the worst vegetable because it’s slimy and doesn’t even taste like anything. The only way I’ve liked it in the past was in Smitten’s Zucchini Carpaccio, or maybe thrown in these noodles when I make them, but other than that I have had no use for it.

The problem is that every summer I see all the farm fresh zucchini at farmer’s market stands, and I get sucked in. It looks so vibrant and green, and I say to myself that I’ll give it one more chance, and next thing you know I have a pile of zucchini sitting on my counter. This year, I really tried to focus on non-slimy applications. I made this Zucchini & Corn Risotto, and while it was good, you don’t even know the zucchini is in there, which is proving my first point, that zucchini doesn’t have any flavour. The second thing I made was Smitten’s Zucchini Quesadillas. In this recipe, the zucchini are thinly sliced and cooked down for almost half an hour with lots of garlic, and then this mixture is combined with lots of cheese and spread between flour tortillas. They were really good, BUT I’d argue that anything is delicious when it’s combined with hot, melty cheese and dunked into guac with hot sauce.

That left one lonely zucchini sitting on my counter. I was tired of savoury applications, so I did something that Danielle and I complain about every summer: I made Zucchini Bread. We have long held the view that it’s stupid to put vegetables in baked goods, only making an exception for the occasional carrot cake. However, Deb posted a recipe for her Ultimate Zucchini Bread at the beginning of the month, and I decided to give it a try. You make it in one bowl and mix it with a fork: what could go wrong?

Well, technically nothing, but the flavour of this cake can best be described as VAGUE. Yes, the zucchini lends some hydration, but if you didn’t see the flecks of green, you’d never know it was in there. In the end, it doesn’t really matter because my co-workers still ate it all. I’ll stop ranting now and just re-read this next Summer to remind myself to put the zucchini down. But if you’re one of those people whose garden is overflowing with zucchini right now, and you need to use it up (which I guess is the point of recipes like this), here’s the recipe.

Zucchini Bread

Source: Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

  • 2 cups grated zucchini (approx. 1 large zucchini)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2/3 cup vegetable oil, olive oil, or melted butter
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 1/4 tsp cinnamon (Fall alert!)
  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 tbsp raw sugar

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350° and spray a loaf pan with non stick spray.
  2. In a large bowl, mix together the zucchini, eggs, oil, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and salt with a fork.
  3. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and baking powder and mix again.
  4. Add the flour and mix one last time, just until the floury bits are incorporated.
  5. Pour batter into a loaf pan and sprinkle with raw sugar.
  6. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean.
  7. Deb says to let the loaf cool in the pan, and not to eat it for 24 whole hours because it tastes better the next day.