Zucchini bread, with its smooth and springy sponge but pleasantly savoury vegetable tang, is a great way to use up squash you’ve got lying around. Even better, it’s very straightforward to make.
A handful of spice – what you’ll need
- 125ml oil – vegetable or olive are fine
- 85g brown sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 350g grated zucchini
- 2 medium to large eggs
- 300g plain flour
- Pinch of nutmeg
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 85g chopped walnuts
How to make it
1. First, preheat your oven: 180C if a standard electric, 160C for a fan oven, or gas mark 4. Now, line a standard loaf tin with butter and baking paper.
2. Grab a big bowl and throw in your eggs, sugar and oil, as well as the courgettes and vanilla. Whisk well to get some air into the mixture.
3. Now, in a different bowl, mix together all the other ingredients. We would add a pinch of salt here to help all the flavours come out, but if you don’t fancy that it’s fine to go without.
4. Finally, combine the two bowls, folding the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Folding is just cooking terminology for stirring in gently so that you don’t knock all the air out of the mixture.
5. Pop it in the oven for an hour. You can tell if the cake is done by sticking a skewer in. When it comes out clean, that means the cake is done.
A couple of things to watch out for
There are really two things to watch out for when baking zucchini bread. One, make sure to mix the ingredients gently, or all the air you introduced when mixing at the beginning will come out of the cake, and it won’t rise as well as it should. Two, it’s important to grate the courgette finely, or the cake will be bitty.
For serving, zucchini bread is really good with a little butter spread on top allowing the salt to cut through the sweetness, or some cream cheese for extra indulgence. It’s also worth noting that you can freeze zucchini bread for up to a month and it won’t lose it’s freshness, so it’s perfect for making ahead of time – just let it defrost on the counter.
