recipe: oil-free, mostly sugar-free, and vegan zucchini bread

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!