Hey guys! I’m so excited to be starting up a blog/recipe page! This is my first post and I decided to bring to you my mom’s zucchini bread recipe!
Now, if you’re looking for a recipe that is healthy (aka, uses applesauce in place of oil, a non sugar sweetener in place of real, granulated sugar, and some weird ground oat in place of flour), then you will probably want to look for a completely different recipe. Any recipe that uses 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of oil is nowhere near healthy… but is it melt in your mouth amazing? Yes. Does it cover up the taste of vegetables and make it taste something like a sweet bread marrying a cake? Yes. Yes it does. And THAT is why I’m posting this recipe.
As a kid, I grew up on an acreage outside of Omaha, Nebraska. We had ten acres where we could roam around, but the best part was that the ground behind our house was land my uncle rented for row crops. On that land, there was an old red barn (the type with a hay loft above and stalls below for animals), as well as an old well where there had once been a windmill. So we decided it would be great place to play on occasion and we spent quite a bit of time playing farm and house in that old barn. (I’m pretty sure we probably weren’t allowed there since my uncle didn’t actually own the land… but I’m glad to say we never got caught.)
ANYWAY… days like this, where we’d play for hours and hours in the hay loft and pretending we were bandits hiding away, we would tend to get hungry after a few hours of playing and eventually find our way back to the kitchen.
My mom ALWAYS had a snack. And when I say snack, I don’t mean Little Debbie snacks or fruit snacks. I mean she made something for us because she was amazing. Some days she would make us popcorn and cut up granny smith apples (always sprinkled with salt). Other days she’d cut up some cheese, summer sausage and crackers. And the best days were the days we would come home and be able to smell the zucchini bread before we even got in the door. Oh those were heavenly summer days.
This recipe is just as my mom made it 15-20 years ago. But if you’d prefer, there are a couple alterations you could make to help make it a bit more healthy. 1) You can replace the 1 cup of oil with all applesauce or a half cup applesauce and a half cup oil. 2) You can replace the sugar with… nothing. 3) Well, that’s about it. If you have other healthy alterations, please feel free to comment but I will not guarantee that it will taste as delicious!
My Mom's Zucchini Bread
Notes
**If you're trying to cut back a little on calories, you can replace the oil with applesauce or even do a mix of half applesauce and half oil.
Ingredients
- 2 C. Sugar
- 1 C. Vegetable Oil
- 3 Eggs
- 3 t. vanilla
- 2 C. Raw, grated zucchini (with skin on)
- 2 C. All Purpose Flour
- 1 t. Baking Soda
- 1/2 t. Baking Powder
- 1 t. Salt
- 3 t. Cinnamon
- 1 C. Chopped Walnuts (Optional)
Instructions
- 1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour (or spray) two loaf pans.
- 2. Blend sugar and oil together. Add eggs & vanilla. Beat together. Add zucchini and dry ingredients. Mix well. Add nuts, if using.
- 3. Pour into the two greased pans and place in preheated oven for 1 hour.
- 4. Check with a toothpick to be sure center is cooked through.
- 5. Let cool in pan for at least 15 minutes in pan. If difficult to remove from pan, gently glide a butter knife around edges to ease the bread away from the pan.
I tried your zucchini bread and it is wonderful! So easy to make.