Healthful Zucchini Bread

Living in Philly, it's easy to find fresh New Jersey (i.e., the Garden State) produce all summer long. This time of year, zucchini is especially plentiful, as it grows like a weed in these parts! Wondering how I'd use the zucchini I bought, I came across a recipe for zucchini bread on Whole Foods' website.

I was happy to see that the recipe incorporated substitutions to make it lower-fat and higher-fiber. And despite this fact, it is one tasty treat! If you find yourself elbow-deep in zucchini, here's a good way to use up some of it. It's also a great way to sneak some veg into a delicious snack!

For once I actually didn't make any changes to the recipe, so this is verbatim from the website with my comments added in.

Zucchini Bread (makes 1 loaf in 8 inch loaf pan)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 egg
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp. plain nonfat yogurt
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup grated zucchini (about 1 6-inch zucchini)
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray an 8-inch loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside. 
• In a large bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. 
• In a separate bowl, whisk together egg, oil, applesauce, yogurt, sugar, and vanilla. Add in flour mixture and stir until well combined (be careful not to overmix). Fold in zucchini and walnuts, and then transfer batter to prepared loaf pan. 
• Bake until risen, deep golden brown, and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean — 50 to 60 minutes. 
• Cool in pan on rack for at least 30 minutes. Then remove bread from pan and continue cooling on rack. 

Now for some tips...

First, having a food processor and using the shredded blade will save you lots of time (and possibly the skins of your knuckles if you're prone to scraping them during the grating process like I am). I doubled the recipe, and it took me about a minute to grate 2 zucchini!

Next, I highly recommend using whole wheat pastry flour as the recipe calls for. You can find it with the other flour — some brands include Hodgson Mill, Bob's Red Mill, or 365 brand (Whole Foods' brand). Because it's whole wheat flour, it's going to add fiber to the zucchini bread (this is a good thing!). And because it's pastry flour, it's softer and will make the bread lighter (as opposed to regular whole wheat flour, which would make the bread dense and less moist). Because whole wheat flour has more oil in it than white flour, I keep it in the freezer to keep it from going bad. This is a great trick for nuts too!

Finally, I had these cutie little paper loaf "pans" that my mom got me, so I made 3 mini loaves and 1 large loaf in a glass plan. You don't have to spray the paper liners w/cooking spray, and they're great to give to people!

Go ahead — get that serving of veg in!