Saturday, July 30, 2011

Zucchini Bread





I should probably make this clear from the start: I don't normally eat zucchini because I don't normally think I'll like it. However, I've been trying to eat more vegetables lately as part of eating healthier all around, and when I made a minestrone soup last week that had zucchini in it, I discovered that I might not hate it quite so much. Thus, another zucchini recipe tonight.


I made a few modifications to this recipe. If you expand the first two reviews at the bottom of the recipe page, you'll see some suggestions I tried. I meant to substitute 1 cup of oil with unsweetened apple sauce, but it turns out I had less than 1 cup of oil on hand so I used it up and made up the difference (just over 1 cup) with unsweetened apple sauce. I also added an extra cup of zucchini (although I admit I was hesitant to do so). I made the crust as suggested by one of the reviews, but in hindsight, if I make it again, I will make half as much. There's crust crumbs falling all over the place now. At the suggestion of my friend Frankie, I added semi-sweet chips to each loaf. If it matters to you, the vanilla extract I used was artificial :)


I had to put in a call on the batphone to my kitchen-friendly relatives at the cottage to find out whether I needed to peel the zucchini first (no, keep the peel on). Then I had to ask whether I still needed to grease & flour the loaf pans if they were non-stick (yes, do it anyway because it can't hurt). Oh, and I discovered that my two zucchinis (totally 0.545 kg at the grocery store) will yield about 4 cups when grated so if anyone needs 1/2 a zucchini, I have some for free. My final question was to ask whether to stir the chocolate chips into the batter, then pour into the loaf pans, or vice versa, and to get an estimate of what amount to use (1/4 cup per loaf, added to batter after poured into loaf pan). It also gave me an excuse to chat with my family for a bit :)


Overall, this recipe was pretty easy to make. It was also pretty easy to make a hideous mess in my kitchen. I'm amazed at how many places zucchini can end up while being shredded, and how many walnut pieces can leap off the counter to end up under my feet. The other reason I like this recipe is because the only things I had to buy for it were the zucchini and apple sauce (the latter by choice) so it used up a lot of ingredients I already had on hand. Amazing how tasty vegetables can be!