zucchini bread.

Last weekend at the farmer's market I bought a few massive zucchinis, the kind I would imagine could win prizes at state fairs. I am not even the biggest fan of zucchini (or even squash of any form), but I couldn't pass up these beauties. As I started planning out foods I could make with them, I thought of zucchini bread and suddenly thought, "Wait, didn't I make some just a couple of weeks ago?" I think my food memory must be fading because I really hardly remembered baking it and never even got around to posting the photographs or recipe on here.

The one thing I do remember was that it was good. So good, in fact, that I quickly inhaled mini-loaf after mini-loaf. Perhaps that is why I had little memory of making them in the first place- they were gone in a flash.

This is actually the one recipe that I have ever used by Mrs. Paula Deen. Surprisingly enough, there is neither butter nor heavy cream in it which makes it, what I assume to be, one of her healthiest baked good recipes. If you have never had zucchini bread before, be prepared for an extremely moist spicy and sweet cake-like bread that actually tastes very little like zucchini.





Zucchini Bread: by Paula Deen

Ingredients:

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 standard loaf pans.
In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in.
Bake for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.