Recipe: Zucchini Nut Bread

Zucchini nut bread-- without nuts-- slathered with cream cheese

This is one delicious zucchini bread! Quite different than the others we've baked in that it's lighter, both in color and texture. Perfect for a snack with a cup of iced coffee, as the recipe begins:

“Serve this marvelous bread in many different ways: hot with coffee for breakfast or a brunch, cold with cheese as a snack, at mealtime to children as a vegetable.”—Winifred Green Cheney, The Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976)

Recipe below.

 

ZUCCHINI NUT BREAD

Makes 2 loaves

2 C zucchini, soaked in ice water for 1 hour, grated coarse unpeeled

4 large eggs, at room temperature

2 C sugar

1 C vegetable oil

3 ½ C unsifted flour, spooned into cup for measuring (reserve ¼ C for nuts and raisins)

4 tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp wheat germ

1 C sliced pecans or walnuts

1 C raisins

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350^o. Beat eggs in large bowl on high speed of electric mixer until thick and lemon colored, and gradually beat in sugar and oil. Sift together 3 ¼ C flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. On low speed of electric mixer, add dry ingredients to egg mixture along with wheat germ alternately with grated zucchini. Dust nuts and raisins with reserved ¼ C flour, and fold into batter. Stir in vanilla. Spoon batter evenly into 2 greased and lightly floured loaf pans lined with waxed paper and bake on lower oven shelf for 55 to 60 minutes or until bread tests done. Cool in loaf pans for 10 minutes, then turn out on wire racks. “Serve hot or cold. This bread keeps well both refrigerated and frozen.”