Zucchini Bread

It is Zucchini Season!

I love to cook and bake to the seasons of what’s growing and right now its Zucchini time!
I received a Zucchini Bread recipe from a dear old friend years ago and through the years I have modified her recipe to make it my very own with flavors I love. This is the first time I am sharing it! I hope you enjoy it as much as my family and friends do!

Zucchini Bread

Now I know a lot of people don’t like to bake or if they do bake they use the ready made box breads or cakes. The trick to baking? Well I found that it is much easier to measure out everything first in bowls or in small ramekins. Then re-read the directions all over again as you proceed with the mixing. It’s that easy to bake!

Measure out all your ingredients

Now I like to double this recipe and give it away as a hostess gift or just to be neighborly. This bread is so good and doesn’t use up a ton of zucchini so if you have a lot of zucchini to use up then this bread is for you.

One of my secret ingredient’s I like to use when baking is the spice called Chinese Five Spice. When I see cinnamon as an ingredient in any recipe I always delete or will split the amounts of the cinnamon with the Chinese 5 Spice. I just love the sweet and spicy aromatic blend of this seasoning. Not only is it tasty in baked goods but it is also a true staple ingredient in many asian recipes.   The aromatic blend of these spices gives flavor to roasted meats and or poultry, which adds wonderful character to stir fry dishes, marinades and mixes well with soy sauce, garlic and ginger.

Chinese Five Spice

Asian 5 spice is also known as the Chinese Five Spices or “Ngo Hiong”. Some mixture’s have Star Anise, Cinnamon, Cloves, Szechwan pepper and ground fennel seeds. I like the Morton & Bassett Spice http://www.mortonbassett.com  which has a mix of cinnamon, anise seed, cloves, ginger and fennel seed.  The “five” flavors: are sour, sweet, bitter, spice and salty. This formula is based on the Chinese philosophy of balancing the yin and yang in food. Now to my recipe!

Zucchini Bread

3 eggs
2 cups sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup cooking oil
1 1/2 cups of grated zucchini (no need to peel)
1/2 cups grated peeled carrots
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp chinese 5 spice
3 cups flour

Preheat oven 350º
Beat eggs add then add line by line after a few beats the next 11 ingredients.

Stir batter through to make sure all is incorporated.
Pour batter in 2 greased loaf pans.

Bake for @ 1 hour and 15 minutes.  
Cool in pans on wire racks for @ 10 min.
Then take a knife and make sure the bread is not sticking to the sides of the pan and empty out and cool on the wire rack.

Zucchini Bread

Then hold yourself back before you eat the entire loaf!