Classic Zucchini Bread

This summer in our new home, Nathan planted a garden. From the garden we got a lot of zucchini. More zucchini than two people can reasonably eat. Some of the zucchini have gotten very large with the largest I'm guessing at about 7lbs. Now some people will tell you that once the zucchini get too big that you should just chuck them or put them in the compost or whatever. If it's a REALLY large zucchini (like our 7 pounder) you can always skin, seed and then use the zucchini. It freezes well and can be used later in soups or shredded in bread.

If it's large, but not too large, just shred the sucker and use it in some zucchini bread! If you don't like zucchini, still make zucchini bread because it's mostly delicious.


When scouring the Internet for a basic zucchini bread recipe, I seemed to stumble on a lot of them that called for a LOT of fat (like 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup of oil) which seemed like an awful lot! At the heart, a zucchini bread and a banana bread are really similar. Therefore, I went to my mom's banana bread recipe and modified it to use zucchini. I replaced the banana with zucchini and did add about 1/4 cup of oil to the recipe as it seemed to need a little extra moisture due to the difference between zucchini and banana. I also added a little bit of vanilla and cinnamon.

The bread turned out moist and delicious. I froze one loaf and will let you know how it is when we decided to defrost and eat it. I'm sure my coworkers and friends can look forward to additional zucchini bread in the future.

Classic Zucchini Bread

Ingredients (for two loaves)

3 cups all purpose flour
3 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs


1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add eggs, oil and vanilla and beat. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon. Alternate mixing the flour mixture and zucchini into the butter mixture until mixed.

Grease and flour two 9x5 inch loaf pans. Pour batter evenly into both pans and bake for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pan for at least 5 minutes before removing.