I'm sure that most of you gardeners out there are up to your ears in zucchini by now and are scrambling for any delicious way to eat them before they go bad, and you've probably already had as many zucchini bread recipes thrown your way as you can bear, but hear me out. I'm not a huge zucchini bread fan (pumpkin is my go-to squash for bread making), but this stuff is good. I came across the recipe on this website a few weeks ago and bookmarked it, thinking I might, maybe, one day, sometime in the distant future, want to try zucchini bread. A few days later, I purchased a ginormous bag of zucchini at the farmers' market (four bucks for a huge bag- enough to fill a brown paper grocery bag!) and decided it was time to give zucchini bread another chance. Usually, I'll test out a few different recipes and find different aspects I like about each and then combine them into one uber-recipe, but this bread is almost perfect as is. I do sometimes swap out half the flour for wheat flour and play around with the nuts and dried fruit, and I omit the nutmeg because that screams "HOLIDAY SEASON" to me, but the base recipe yields a deliciously moist breakfast bread that I wouldn't want to change.
Zucchini Bread with Pineapple
Adapted from Simply Recipes
Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 cup olive oil
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups coarsely grated zucchini (I grate mine a bit finer when using wheat flour, just because I prefer the texture that way).
1 can (8oz) crushed pineapple, drained
3 cups all purpose flour (or replace half with wheat flour)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1 cup raisins
1 Preheat oven to 350°F. In a mixer, beat eggs. Add oil, sugar, and vanilla; continue beating mixture until thick and foamy. With a spoon, stir in the zucchini and pineapple.
2 In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. A third at a time, add dry ingredients into wet and gently stir (by hand) after each addition. Add the walnuts and raisins, blend gently.
3 Divide the batter equally between 2 greased and flour-dusted 5 by 9 inch loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in to the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes. Turn out onto wire racks to cool thoroughly.
Makes 2 loaves.