Mama Maria's Sehr Zucchini Zucchini Bread Recipe- MMSZZ

Long title for a recipe and really it's just a way of saying that I've been adding more zucchini to an existing zucchini bread recipe. (And possibly a way to increase interest in a pretty banal recipe...)

Let me explain the title:

The original recipe for this zucchini bread is called "Mom's Zucchini Bread" and I got it from the never disappointing Allrecipes website here. But I've tweaked it and made it "mine" ergo "Maria." However, I still wanted to pay homage to the maternal adjective from the original recipe.  I changed it from "mom" to "mama" because "mama" sounds better than "mom" when paired with "Maria." 

The word "sehr" only makes sense if you know German because it's a German word and not English! It means "very" and it starts (sort of) with a "z" sound which of course alliterates with "zucchini." It's pronounced as if you put a "z" sound in front of the word "air." But not exactly. It's really more like "Ts-air." But if you're saying it fast, it sounds like "z-air." So I used it as my adjective because Mama Maria's recipe has a cup more zucchini in it than the original recipe. Ergo it's "very" zucchini (or at a minimum more than from the original recipe).

The other big change I made to the recipe is that I only use half of the oil that the recipe calls for. For the other half, I use applesauce. That makes the recipe slightly healthier (less calories and fat) and more like bread. The word "bread" in the original recipe is a misnomer. The ingredients when combined and baked make a cake, not bread. The fact that it's baked in a bread pan and not a cake pan and is referred to as bread does not make it a bread. (If you compare the ingredient list and amounts of each to a recipe for say, carrot cake, you'll see stark similarities between a typical zucchini bread recipe and a carrot cake recipe. I'll show a screen shot of two recipes at the end. For now, trust me that zuchinini bread is cake albeit one that is not usually frosted and is made in a bread pan to give a bread like appearance.)

Adding some applesauce to the recipe means that the bread is quite fruity. Botanically, anything grown from seed is a fruit which makes zucchini a fruit. However, culinarily, it's considered a vegetable since it's not sweet. 

Let's get grating, sifting, mixing and stirring- we've got bread, er cake? to make

Ingredients & Instructions:

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon each of salt, baking powder and baking soda

1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon or to taste

3 large eggs

1/2 cup applesauce and 1/2 cup oil

2 cups of sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups shredded zucchini

Add in of choice including nuts or chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour two 8x4 inch loaf pans

Sift first four ingredients (the dry ingredients) in a bowl

Beat eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla together in a large bowl with an electric mixer until combined. 

Add the flour mixture and beat well.

Stir in shredded zucchini and nuts and/or chocolate chips.

Pour batter into plans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 to sixty minutes.

Notes:

1. I figured out why my loaves were so flat (I blamed using the last dregs of my baking soda...). I baked mine in 9x5 pans. I glossed right over the 8x4 part! I will definitely use 8x4 pans next time.

2. I increased the zucchini from two cups in the original recipe to three and didn't notice any difference in taste or texture of the bread. My zucchini was medium to large and grating it resulted resulted in three cups- I preferred to use all of the zucchini and not store any additional amount which is why I tried it with the entirety of the zucchini- three cups. 

3. For the applesauce, I used one of those individual cups of applesauce since that's generally how I buy it (I don't use it often enough when I buy a jar and it ends up getting moldy). One of the cups is slightly less than 1/2 cup; I didn't add anymore applesauce and it was fine. Alternatively, you can use a cup of oil, as the original recipe called for. It will make the bread (really and truly cake at this point... but whatever) quite rich.

4. Speaking of cake and rich, two cups of sugar is a lot- the actual recipe called for 2 1/4 cups. Eeks- no! I usually use one cup of sugar and one cup of zero calorie sugar substitute like Stevia. That will impact the taste as, unfortunately, no sugar substitute tastes exactly like sugar. But the final product will be sweet. You could use artificial sweetener for both cups for the sugar though it's not something that I've done. I like a little bit of the real thing...

5. Buttering pieces of the cooked bread with a cinnamon sugar butter (can be bought or made) is a splendid way to enjoy a piece of this bread. Or, to really elevate the bread to a dessert, slather some cream cheese frosting on the top. Everyone will love this!

Speaking of cake, I am going to screen shot the zucchini bread recipe from Allrecipes that I've tweaked after making it multiple times and also I'm going to screen shot my go to carrot cake recipe. Though the recipes aren't exact duplicates (besides the difference of carrots/zucchini in them) you can see that the ingredient list and proportions of ingredients are not dissimilar at all. If making the Allreipces zucchini bread recipe, I definitely believe you're making cake. But call it what you want :).

Allrecipes- "Mom's Zucchini Bread" (linked above)- this is a screenshot of the ingredient list

 

 Here's a screen shot of the carrot cake recipe that I make:

 

 “A Sink in Summertime” aka I just finished making zucchini bread and marinara and both of those made a lot dishes dirty. You wouldn't have just made homemade items if you didn't have a sink full of dishes!

  

 Linking up with Joanne for Talking about it Tuesday