Zucchini Loaf

What do you do when your garden overwhelms you with zucchini?  Or when a friend (in my case, my mother-in-law) is blessed with an abundance of zucchini?  Make zucchini loaf!

I tried this loaf a few days ago, even though I was short one egg, and didn't have cinnamon, so substituted allspice - which smelled the closest to cinnamon to me.   At the time, I doubled the recipe.

I loved it so much that I decided to make it again tonight, this time with cinnamon, and I tripled the recipe.  It was very difficult to mix such a large amount (in retrospect, I should have doubled, then made a second batch), and the zucchini was larger, so the peel was tough.  But the wonderful aroma in the house is well worth the effort.

The recipe is from ifood.tv, this page.

INGREDIENTS:

 3 eggs

 1 cup oil

 1 Tablespoon vanilla
 2 cups peeled grated zucchini
 1 teaspoon baking soda
 1 teaspoon baking powder
 1 teaspoon salt
 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
 3 cups flour
 2 cups sugar
 optional : 1/2 cup chopped dates
 optional : 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

DIRECTIONS:
 Beat eggs well, add sugar, vanilla and oil and mix well.
 Mix dry ingredients together and add, together with dates and nuts.
 Best done in electric mixer.
 Pour into 2 greased loaf 5"x9" pans and bake about 1 hour at 350 F.
 Remove and cool on wire rack.

I omitted the dates, since I'm not a big fan of them, and also the nuts, so that the kids are able to take the loaf to school in their lunches.

It's funny, now that I'm reading it, I see that this recipe was for 2 loaves.  I was wondering why the pan was so full, and I ended up with such a huge loaf.  Hmmm, next time I'd make it smaller, I think.  Maybe 3 pans for double the recipe.  My oven is always a bit slower than the recipe calls for, but I found it took 1 hr 40 min to be done (use a bamboo skewer to test the center - it should not be gooey).  But then again, I was using twice the batter per pan than the recipe called for!

When I used the smaller zucchini, I left a small amount of peel on, so there were flecks of green in the loaf.  Kinda pretty.  The larger zucchini had too tough of a peel.  The flavour of the loaf is mild, somewhat reminiscent of pumpkin loaf, and not too sweet.  A really nice loaf to go with tea or coffee or a nice cold glass of milk.  Oh, and it freezes well.  If you don't eat it first, especially when it is warm out of the oven.