Zucchini Bread

Or what to do when your boss hands you a zucchini the size of your head. And you already have 3 small ones at home from the CSA.

I absolutely love zucchini bread. Especially toasted and smeared with peanut butter for breakfast. When I was little it was the only way I would eat zucchini. We used to get so many from our neighbors (we never grew any vegetables) that my mother once threatened to make zucchini toothpaste. Thankfully it never came to that.

For this recipe (and I can't believe I found a Paula Deen recipe without butter or shortening) I omitted the nuts, dropped the sugar to 2 cups, and substituted 1 c. of applesauce for the vegetable oil. It's moist (almost to the point of sticky) and holds up well in the freezer. It would go in the "Freezes Beautifully" section of my cookbook.

Zucchini Bread
Recipe courtesy Paula Deen

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

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 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 in 2 standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.