I just barely got my garden planted this year. This seems to happen every year. But this year I will blame the pandemic and the newborn baby who arrived two weeks into lockdown. That seems fair.

The garden has provided a steady enough stream of zucchini to keep me on my toes, always wondering if one is about to go bad in the crisper, but never so many that I needed to give any away.

So I found myself needing to bake zucchini bread a few times. I don’t actually enjoy zucchini as a vegetable. I didn’t grow up eating it. I hate making any kind of fritter. Really, all I know to do with it is throw some in a stir fry or make zucchini bread. (Although I have taken to hiding shredded zucchini in almost anything when I have some leftover from making this zucchini bread).

Smitten Kitchen is always a wise place to start when looking for a tried and true recipe. Deb never steers me wrong. This zucchini bread is moist, uses lots of zucchini, and has a great subtle spiced flavor. My kids love it, their friends love it, their nanny loves it. I’m adding this to my blog not because I changed it much, but because I don’t want to forget which one it was that I loved. She has updated and changed this recipe, but I like the original, so I don’t want to get confused. And I like to type up recipes I like so that they fit on one sheet of paper so I can add them to my binder and then I upload them here, too, in case anyone else is like me.

Zucchini Bread

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup of melted butter/vegetable oil
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp cardamom
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 cups grated, packed zucchini, not wrung out
• 3 cups all-purpose flour

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray two bread pans with nonstick spray, or grease with butter and line with parchment paper (or coat with flour). Or prepare muffin pans.
2. Whisk eggs, oil/butter (I use about half and half), sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Add cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to the wet ingredients and mix them in well. Stir in zucchini, then carefully stir in the flour until it just disappears.
3. Divide the batter into the two bread pans. Bake for 55-65 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. (Muffins will only take 20-25 minutes). Let the loaves cool for 10 minutes and then turn them out onto a cooling rack.