This past Friday afternoon, a lady that lives down my street brought my grandmother these giant zucchinis growing in her yard. At this point, my grandmother had about 6 zucchinis already in the fridge, some from our neighbor and some from our garden. And as nice as the gesture was, she didn't know what to do with all of these zucchinis! Especially since she had already made zucchini soup this week!
So yesterday morning I was looking through my recipe binder, that contains all sorts of recipes from all sorts of people, and found one from my aunt for zucchini bread. Thus begins the making of zucchini bread with my grandmother. And the best part about this is.... one slice is LESS than 100 calories!! As long as you don't consider half of the loaf as 1 slice that is... and after trying the bread it might actually come to that!
Ingredients
3 cups shredded zucchini
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup olive oil (I ALWAYS, ALWAYS use olive oil, except for cookies- then butter is acceptable), but regular- not extra virgin
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (I didn't have cloves so I left it out- it's such a small amount anyway)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 chopped nuts (or chocolate chips if you desire, like me, and I probably added about 1 1/2 cups hehe)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease the bottom of two loaf pans (9x5x3 roughly).
Shred the zucchini, my grandmother peeled off the skin and used a cheese grater (and take our the seeds as well of course). PS. LOOK at the SIZE of that zucchini!! It's larger than our toaster!!
Three cups for us what a little less than one large zucchini, the one we used was slightly smaller than the one pictured above. But if I had to guess I would say 3 cups is about 2-3 medium sized zucchini.
In a large bowl, mix the zucchini, sugar, oil, vanilla, and eggs until well combined. I didn't even beat the eggs before putting them in the bowl... just add it allll in
Here's what it looked like after all the wet + sugar additions:
Then in a smaller bowl add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and mix with fork or whisk until well combined and add to the wet mixture.
Now it's time to add in the yummy chocolate chips! I used semi-sweet by the way.
Pour the batter into the pans and bake 50 to 60 minutes- mine were in for about 60 minutes until the toothpick came out clean. When they're done remove from oven and cool for about 10-20 minutes then loosen from the pans and remove. Allow the bread to cool completely before digging in!
It was still breakfast time so I enjoyed a slice of mine with some freshly cut strawberries!
