Before you give me too much credit, no, I haven’t used any amazing season-extension techniques to get fresh zucchini in mid-May here in Virginia. My zucchini plants are growing quickly, but they won’t be producing before the middle of June. On the other hand, June will be here before we know it, and that means it’s time to use up any zucchini lingering from last year’s harvest. Digging around in the freezer yesterday, I found one remaining bag: 2 cups shredded, which is exactly the amount needed to make two loaves of zucchini bread. Didn’t take long to figure out what to do with it. 🙂
So here’s my favorite zucchini bread recipe.
Zucchini Bread
In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 C. sugar, 2/3 C. brown sugar, 3 eggs, and 1 C. vegetable oil. On top of this, add 2 C. white flour, 2 C. whole wheat flour, 1-1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, and 1 T. cinnamon. Gently mix the dry ingredients with each other before incorporating into the wet ingredients below. Stir in 1 T. vanilla, 2 C. shredded zucchini (unpeeled), and 1/2 C. chopped nuts.
Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans at 350°F for 1 hour.
gettin' fresh! 
I love zucchini bread! I don’t know why I’ve never thought to shred and freeze zucchini. I will have to remember this when the zucchini starts coming in.
The freezing does burst the cells of the zucchini, so after it’s been frozen, it’s not something you’d want to serve by itself, but it works great in breads. Just make sure you also dump in all the water that the freezing released, or your bread will be too dry!
What a great idea to shred and freeze it! I love zucchini bread (although mine is more like cake, and who doesn’t love cake?). So, do you ever use any other squash with the same recipe? I’m wondering because, um, I kind of lost my head planting squash this year, and well, yeah. Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, I have extra Henry Wilde Sunflower seeds, would you use them if I sent them to you? Let me know. Thanks for the great post, (again)!
No, I haven’t tried other squash in the recipe, but I’m sure it would work! And I would love some sunflower seeds, if you don’t think it’s too late to plant. (Temp’s here are now reaching into the 90s in the afternoon.) I’d love to send you something in return, but I guess squash wouldn’t work… Have you been intrigued by any of the varieties I’ve posted about? You grow so much variety yourself, you probably have all of them already!
Any recipe that uses up spare courgettes (that’s what we call them in UK) is a good idea.
Absolutely! Now I can figure out why the UK uses the French word for this one (proximity, if nothing else), but why did we Americans start using the Italian word? Maybe it was Italian immigrants who introduced us to the food? There’s got to be a book on stuff like this somewhere…