Decadent Garden Zucchini Bread

This morning I pulled a recipe off of Allrecipes for zucchini bread, but as I started preparing it, I found I was out of many of the ingredients. However, disaster was averted with a little creativity and a lot of luck. Because I was sprinkling this, dumping that, and dashing a little of everything, it was difficult to record the exact recipe, but here’s a stab at it.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups white sugar
• 1/4 cup honey (Really it was one really long slow drizzle from the jar)
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 stick of butter (I was out of vegetable oil and only had one stick!)
• 1/3 cup olive oil (As I poured in the oil, I remembered where I had stashed the jar of apple sauce, my oil and butter substitute)
• 1/2 cup apple sauce
• 3 cups of a mixture of grated zucchini, squash and carrots. I used 2 carrots, 2 zucchini, and several types of squash and just grated away until I had my 3 cups of veggies.
• Chocolate chips
• Flax seed
• Almonds

First, I sifted the flower, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a bowl. In another bowl, I beat the eggs and mixed in the sugar, vanilla, butter, olive oil, and apple sauce. I stirred in the veggies the best I could before mixing it all together with the other dry ingredients.

I split the recipe into a pan of muffins and 1 loaf. Because I have two boys, muffins are more fun for them. They aren’t huge fans of nuts yet (or weird textures), so for the muffins, I sprayed the pans and then filled the cups 2/3 of the way full then added 5 – 7 chocolate chips in each. I then sprayed the loaf pan and poured in the remaining mixture. I sprinkled out a layer of flax seed over the top, then a layer of sliced almonds, and finally a handful or two of chocolate chips before gently folding it all in. I’d probably change this by folding it all in the bowl because my loaf stuck to the bottom of the pan.

The muffins cooked for about 15 minutes and the loaf for 1 hour. This recipe makes a dense, moist bread. Enjoy!