a taste of summer

Last night as my husband rummaged through the freezer to find the pancakes that were to be the boy's dinner (things get pretty lax during tax season) he saw that I had two bags left of frozen shredded zucchini that needed to be used up.  According to the brains that post on the web, it normally should be used within three months.  This stuff was five months old, but it looked, smelled and tasted just fine, so today I made zucchini bread.  My house was instantly transported to a late summer afternoon, minus the fact that my kiddo was outside playing wearing three layers and a stocking cap.

And because I'm a nice person, I will share with you the recipe handed down to me by my mother, a recipe that has been making tummies happy places since my childhood.

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1 cup oil*

2 cups sugar

1 Tbsp vanilla

2 cups grated zucchini**

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 Tbsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp baking powder

Beat eggs and add sugar, oil, vanilla and zucchini.  Mix dry ingredients and add to zucchini mixture.  Grease and flour two bread pans (even if they're a non stick pan, grease 'em) and bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour.  (Mine are usually done around 50-55 min, when the inserted toothpick comes out clean.)  See bottom of the post for additions to this recipe.

Notes:  I always, always double this recipe because two loaves are never enough.  The doubled mixture is just big enough for my standard kitchen aide to handle.  *I often replace half the oil with applesauce and always replace half the flour, if not more, with whole wheat flour.  **If using frozen zucchini, let it thaw first in a strainer, allowing extra liquid to run off.  I don't squeeze any more out, just let most of it drip out.  These loaves also freeze well.  I wrap them in tin foil, write the date on them and then put two loaves per freezer bag.

If you're lucky, the hordes will wait until the loaves cool before attacking them.

He was eating it so fast all the pictures were blurred.

The doubled recipe made three regular loaves and two mini loaves.  The biggest loaf (I have mismatched bread pans) was a little bit gooey on the inside and might have cooked for 5 minutes longer than the rest, but my honey likes the centers to be a little gooey, so everyone is a happy camper around here.  The mini loaves were done at 40 minutes in a dark nonstick pan.

A few alterations to this include:

adding 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (sacrilege in my opinion, but if you insist...)

to make chocolate zucchini bread (mmm... an excuse to eat dessert during the day, because it's bread) take out 3 Tbsp of flour and replace with 3 Tbsp of cocoa powder.  Then add 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips.