If you have ever grown zucchini, chances are you have ended up with a few (or if you’re like me, many) that grew into monsters. You see a smallish zucchini, and think “I’ll wait a bit longer until it gets a bit bigger.” Then two days of rain comes, and whoops, your little guy became enormous! The large ones are not that great for eating, because the flesh is more watery and the seeds start to become large and tough.
Luckily, all is not lost, because there’s the summer classic to the rescue: zucchini bread, a perfect way to use up your overgrown zukes. If you have friends who like to bake, and you give them a whopper, they may even give you back some bread in return. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
This basic bread freezes well, and can be dressed up with ⅓ cup chocolate and/or nuts as desired.
Ingredients
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ¾ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ⅓ cup yogurt
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 1 ⅓ cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ cups grated zucchini
- 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9 x 5" loaf pan.
- In a bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder and cinnamon until well mixed.
- In another bowl, mix oil, yogurt, sugar and eggs until mixture is homogeneous. Stir in zucchini and vanilla. Blend in flour mixture just until all ingredients are moistened.
- Pour into loaf pan and bake 1 hour, or until toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool for 15 minutes on a rack, then unmold the loaf. Allow to cool completely before slicing.