This past week I’ve been lucky enough to bake on three occasions, although lazy enough only to be posting about them now.

In typical British fashion, I feel it is imperative that I discuss the weather before getting on with the recipe.  Not in great length, but in enough words to describe how piss-poor and dreary it is outside.  It’s been a while since we’ve had this steady and long a downpour.  My friend Helen and I got a wee bit lost trying to find the bus station in Dundee, and as a result got extra soaked.  Then there was the trudge home from the St Andrews bus station, although by that point I think I’d accepted that I was soaked through.  Now, though, I have the pleasure of watching the rain come down in sheets from the nice warm indoors.  I’ve slipped on my fleece pyjama bottoms, snuggled into my cosy slippers and I’ve just finished enjoying a cup of hot squash with a few biscuits.  Life is good, apart from the mountain of school work awaiting my attention.  But that’ll wait til after this post.

Now, onto the recipe.  This past week, I had a courgette and a half sitting in the fridge and decided to try and make a quickbread with grated zucchini.  I’d never tried making a zucchini bread before.  Surprisingly, I’ve never made a quickbread before – or not in recent memory.  Banana bread isn’t really an option because I don’t normally buy bananas or my flatmates eat them up before they get too squishy.  And normally, I’d choose a brownie or cookie recipe over a recipe for a quickbread.

But the time felt right, and I was browsing one of my favourite blogs, Closet Cooking, when I came across a recipe for Zucchini Bread.  It was amazing! I think my flatmates and I devoured it in a day and a half.  I really enjoyed how the cinnamon and nutmeg flavours really stood out.  My one comment is that I don’t think I cooked it long enough.  Or perhaps, I think I got the conversion between Fahrenheit and Celsius wrong and as such cooked it at a lower temperature.  In any event, my bread was very moist but probably could have stayed in the oven for another ten minutes.

Kevin, from Closet Cooking, added some walnuts and raisins to his bread, which I’m sure was delicious.  However, I had neither on hand so I decided to omit both of them.  Instead, I mixed a bit of cinnamon, brown sugar, and maple syrup and crumbled it on top.  The resulting loaf was crowned with a sticky, sweet and slightly burnt layer of goodness.

I’ve included the original recipe, minus my modifications because I feel it would be excellent with the raisins and nuts.

If you’ve never tried making a zucchini bread before, give it a go! You won’t be disappointed.  And for those fo you who are already stout supporters of the use of courgettes in baking, here’s another excellent recipe to add to your repertoire.

Enjoy!

Zucchini Quick Bread

From Closet Cooking

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups zucchini (grated, squeezed and drained)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1 egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup walnuts (chopped)
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:
1. Mix the zucchini, sugar, oil, yogurt and egg in a bowl.
2. Mix the flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl.
3. Mix the wet and dry ingredients.
4. Mix in the nuts and raisins.
5. Pour the batter into a greased 5X9 inch loaf pan.
6. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean, about 50-70 minutes.