Up until a year ago, I had no clue zucchini bread existed. Maybe I've been living under a rock my whole life, or maybe my parents never liked vegetables enough to consider baking with them. I was the biggest skeptic of all. It seemed pretty impossible to take a bland tasting vegetable and make it taste almost sweet enough to be considered a dessert.
If we're being honest, sometimes I eat this scrumptious zucchini bread for breakfast when I'm not feeling very inspired to cook in the morning. We all have those days. This recipe is fairly healthy, as it calls for 2 cups of shredded zucchini in the mix.
To lighten up the original recipe, I swapped out Crisco as the 'fat' and opted for butter instead. Also, to further the health benefits, I cut the amount of butter in half (from ½ cup to ¼ cup) and used ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce to keep the bread moist. Although you could replace all the butter by substituting a full ½ cup of applesauce, I found the texture of the bread to be a little chewier than the original.
To preserve the integrity of this super-moist and flavorful zucchini bread but to still cut down on calories, the way to go would be to keep half the butter and substitute the rest with applesauce. The end result is a soft and moist bread with a simply divine texture.
On colder mornings, try toasting or microwaving a slice of this zucchini bread and spreading on a little butter if you so please. There's also the option of having this bread in a bite-sized form. Simply spoon batter into muffin cups and reduce baking time accordingly. What's your favorite way to make zucchini? Do you have an old family recipe like this? Let me know, I'd love to hear about it!
Recipe
The Best Zucchini Bread
To preserve the integrity of this super-moist and flavorful bread but to still cut down on calories, the way to go would be to keep half the butter and substitute the rest with applesauce. The end result is a soft and moist bread with a simply divine texture. On colder mornings, try toasting or microwaving a slice of this zucchini bread and spreading on a little butter if you so please.
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- ¼ cup butter
- ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups grated zucchini
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon heaping ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ cup chopped nuts, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Grease loaf pans or place cupcake liners in muffin pan.
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, beat eggs, sugar, butter, applesauce, and vanilla.
- Add in grated zucchini, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and baking powder.
- If desired, add in chopped nuts of choice. I did not use nuts for this particular recipe, but walnuts would be a good choice!
- Mix together all ingredients until well blended. To make this easier, I added all ingredients straight into my Kitchenaid stand mixer and mixed for about 30-45 seconds using the paddle attachment.
- Pour mixture into greased loaf pans or cupcake liners. Fill pans/liners only about halfway full.
- For loaves, begin to check for doneness around 40-45 minutes. Once a toothpick runs clean, remove loaves from the oven. The same goes for muffins, but begin to check around 12 minutes, as some ovens are more powerful than others.
- Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack and cool completely before removing loaves from pan.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 24 Serving Size: 1 gramsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 140Unsaturated Fat: 0g
