Zucchini Bread
- Howie Bulka
- Aug 2
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 3
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When God Gives You Zucchini
Truth be told, I don't like Zucchini very much. It’s not terrible, but it’s not my favorite vegetable. Zucchini has its uses for sure, mostly as a supporting actor in recipes, particularly salads, where its vibrant color and astonishingly low-calorie count are useful. This time of year, zucchini is a welcome, if unobtrusive addition to my favorite Summer Salad. To make Summer Salad, I toss raw sweet corn, shaved off the cobb, canned black beans, bell peppers, red onion, cucumber and a whole lot of diced zucchinis with good olive oil, a squeeze of lime juice and pinch of ground cumin. Cherry tomatoes, cucumber or anything else ripening on the vine is a welcome addition. A tangle of crispy tortilla strips piled on top are worth the calories. Garnished with cotija cheese, or feta which is a good substitute, and lots of fresh cilantro, Summer Salad is marvelously delicious, it’s low in calories and high in fiber. It’s a delicious accompaniment to grilled meat, a perfect potluck ‘bring’, or simply a satisfying weekday supper on its own. No backyard barbecue or high protein diet should be without it.
But I digress. If I said squash is icky, would you agree? It has a mild, grassy flavor that, ironically, tends to get milder the longer it’s cooked. Simply steamed it vanishes into tastelessness. Sauteed is a better choice, where a heavy hand with olive oil and garlic can offer up a workable, if uninspiring, side dish. I’m generally willing to lend a portion of my plate to a simply cooked vegetable, but life is short. Stuffed zucchini is for shmucks. By the time you’ve prepped and cooked a filling, most recipes call for ground beef or Italian sausage, hollowed and stuffed the squash and grated the mountain of cheese it takes make these ridiculous things edible, there’s not much left of the zucchini when you pull it out from under the broiler. I mean, what culinary sense is there in a recipe where the main ingredient is rendered unrecognizable? If you must go to such lengths to hide the zucchini, perhaps you should have started with a bell pepper or just made Mac and Cheese?
Squash would not be a problem in my life, let alone the subject of this missive, if I didn’t have so damn much of it. Every spring I plant four squash seedlings in a raised bed in my backyard garden. They seem harmless enough, the botanical equivalent of a puppy, barely six inches high when I plant them around Mother’s Day. And then they begin to grow. Slowly at first and then at an astonishing rate, tantamount to jack’s beanstalk. It’s other worldly. Every year I end up with a truckload of summer squash, mostly zucchini and crookneck. I should know better. I should plant less, but I don’t. At my age doing something simply because you’ve done it before seems perfectly reasonable. So, my problem is not what to do with squash. My problem is what to do with a lot of it, ten or fifteen pounds of squash every week throughout June and most of July.
Years ago, I realized that my zucchini problem would not be solved by the puny requirements of zucchini fritters, Summer Salad or even Stanly Tucci’s “Spaghetti alla Nerano”, which is a lovely recipe. Unloading my surplus on my neighbors was futile. Vine ripened tomatoes or figs are easy to unload, zucchini not so much. The unwritten rules of backyard gardening state that anything one grows that is edible must be eaten. It doesn’t matter who eats it. And of course, it’s a sin to waste. So, I needed to think bigger. I needed a recipe that used squash by the pound. I needed a recipe that could be foisted upon friends and neighbors without resistance. When God gives you zucchini, make zucchini bread.
Zucchini bread belongs to the family of recipes known as loaf cakes. Banana bread, lemon loaf and pound cake are the most popular examples. A loaf cake is a simple unfrosted cake traditionally baked, not surprisingly, in a loaf pan. Loaf cakes are typically prepared using the “one bowl method”, which means they are mixed in one bowl, usually by hand, without whipped eggs which would require, you guessed it, a second bowl. Loaf cakes are sweet, but not overly, more suited to teatime than dessert. I am in favor of finishing my loaf cakes with a simple icing, variations on a basic Royal Icing, which I prepare in a food processor, which is not technically a second bowl. The added glaze serves to ‘seal’ the cake, retaining moistness, greatly improving shelf life. Licking the glaze from one’s sticky fingers is a bonus.
I am entirely smitten with this recipe for zucchini bread, our Recipe of the Month for June. It is based upon my carrot cake recipe. I began by substituting zucchini for carrots. Zucchini are much less sweet than carrots and the result was almost savory, with a pronounced vegetable flavor. Which I liked. I switched from white sugar to brown sugar, which is more nuanced and toasted the walnuts to bring out their flavor. In all, I had found a nice balance of flavors. I kicked up the salt, backed off on the cinnamon and upped the nutmeg. I added toasted coconut, which is yummy, but it also makes the cake less ‘spongy’ and more ‘crumbly’. My baker’s intuition told me that a little whole wheat flour in the mix would do the same. A darn good recipe, if I do say so myself.
How to Make Zucchini Bread
Yields one standard 9 x 5 loaf pan
App. 2 lbs Zucchini
150 G Light Brown Sugar
60 g Olive oil
2 ea Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
200 g AP flour
80 g Whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon, ground
.5 tsp nutmeg, grated
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Baking soda
1 cup Walnuts, roasted and finely chopped
1/2 cups Coconut Shredded unsweetened or sweetened, toasted, finely chopped
2 Tbl Granulated Sugar
1 recipe Glaze for Zucchini Bread (optional)
Preparing the Zucchini
Wash the zucchini under cold running water. Drain well.
Using a box grater or a food processor fitted with a shredding disk, Grate The zucchini.
To remove excess moisture, wrap the shredded zucchini in a clean dish towel. Twist the towel to ring out the zucchini juice. Press hard.
Measure out 475 Grams of the drained zucchini. Discard the rest.
Preparing the Zucchini Bread
In a large bowl, stir together the brown sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla.
Add prepared zucchini. Combine.
Sift together the dry ingredients.
Add dry mixture to the zucchini mixture. Combine. Do not overwork.
Add walnuts and coconut. Combine.
Prepare a 9 x 5 loaf pan by coating with non-stick spray and bakers’ parchment.
Spoon Batter into a prepared pan, level out the surface a bit.
Sprinkle the top with a couple tablespoons of granulated sugar.
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. Rotate once.
The cake will test done when a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out with just a smidgeon moist cake on it.
Remove from oven and allow to cool to room temperature.
If you chose to glaze the cake, the recipe and procedure are noted below.
Glaze for Zucchini Bread
Yields ¼ Cup
60 g Powdered Sugar
20 g Butter, Melted
40 g Milk
pinch Salt
Place powdered sugar and salt into a small mixing bowl.
Add the milk in a slow stream, whisking vigorously until smooth and homogeneous.
Add the melted butter. combine
When the cake has cooled to room temperature, ladle the glaze over the top of the Zucchini Bread making sure the glaze covers the entire surface evenly. It will run over the edges of the cake a bit. That’s a good thing.
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