My co-worker brought me a huge zucchini from his garden
yesterday and the first thing I thought when I saw it was “zucchini bread.”
Lately I’ve been trying to avoid processed sugars and oil though, so I assumed zucchini
bread that met these requirements would be impossible to make. Well with the
exception of 1 tbsp of honey, I was able to make a recipe that was pretty good.
The key to my success was making date paste to substitute sugar. I’ve listed
the recipe below (adapted from this recipe from Oh She Glows) plus a few pictures of the finished
product. The bread is pretty moist (which makes sense since I used wet sugars
instead of dry ones) but it’s very tasty and not overly sweet.
Ingredients
½ cup pitted dates + ¼ cup hot water for date paste
1 fake egg (either a flax egg with 1 Tbsp ground flax + 3
Tbsp water or other egg substitute)
1 ¼ cup packed shredded zucchini (include peel)
1 Tbsp lemon zest
2 tsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp honey
1 cup non-dairy milk
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
1. Soak dates in hot water for at least an hour.
Process dates with water in a food process or blender to make date paste.
2. Preheat oven to 375˚F. Make fake egg and set aside
to thicken.
3. In a large bowl, mix together date paste, fake
egg, zucchini, lemon zest, lemon juice, honey, and milk.
4. Carefully stir in remaining ingredients just
until combined.
5. Pour mixture into a lightly greased loaf pan.
6. Bake at 375˚F for 40 minutes. At end of
baking increase temperature to 400˚F and bake an additional 10 minutes.
Allow bread to cool before serving.
The corner piece is always the best.
Yum!
