Zucchini and Carrot Loaf

Many, many years ago, when I was still at university, a friend of my American cousins was visiting us for a few weeks.   Like most of my Californian cousins and their friends, I thought she was wonderful and worldly in a way that we were not.

She embroidered intricate designs on her clothing and on bandanas and she was a really good baker.   One day she announced that she would be making zucchini bread, and I thought at the time that nothing sounded more dreadful than bread made with zucchini.  She promised that it would be great, and went ahead and made it.  I tasted it reluctantly and was more than pleasantly surprised to find that it was fantastic.

That was forty years ago.

The other day as I was making banana bread (here is the link: http://downrightvegan.blogspot.ca/2014/12/cranberry-banana-bread.html) I remembered my friend's zucchini bread and decided I would try to invent a recipe that was vegan version of my friend's cake.  I used my banana bread recipe as a base for it, but had to do some tweaking of it.  For starters, I didn't have enough zucchinis on hand for the recipe and was reluctant to go to the store because I had to play Florence Nightingale to my very sick cat.

My banana bread requires three bananas to make 1 1/4 cups of bananas.  I had that muchzucchini but I wanted to make two loaves so I supplemented my zucchini with carrots, and the loaves turned out just fine.



The batter was very thick and I was afraid that baking soda alone would not be enough to make the bread rise so I also added baking powder.

This recipe makes two loaves of bread.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees

Wet ingredients

Mix together in a large mixing bowl or in the bowl of your stand mixer:

Egg replacer to the equivalent of two eggs.   I used ener-g egg replacer.
2/3 cup of canola oil
2/3 cup of pure maple syrup

Carrots and Zucchini

You will need a total of 2 1/2 to 2 2/3 cups of grated carrots and zucchini.  I measured out a total of about 1 1/3 cups each.  I didn't press the grated veg down too hard in the measuring cup, but the difference in total volume is based on the fact that when I pressed down on the grated veggies to measure them, the veggies expanded back up a little bit.

Add these veggies to the liquid ingredients and mix for for about ten seconds.

Dry Ingredients

Mix together in a large bowl

2 1/2 Cups of all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
Pinch of salt
1 cup of chopped walnuts
1 cup of dried cranberries

Add these dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and the veggies in the bowl of your mixer, or if you are using a hand mixer, add them to the wet ingredients.

Mix until blended.  This batter is very stiff.

Prepare two loaf pans in your usual manner and then add the batter evenly to the pans and press down a bit to make sure there are no air pockets in your batter.

Bake in the oven for 30 - 35.  All ovens differ, and when I checked mine at 30 minutes it was not quite done.

Your loaf is done when a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean and dry