When you just have too much zucchini
I have a smallish vegetable and fruit garden that I plant each year. I’m not a professional gardener by any stretch of the imagination, but I love to get into my garden and see what grows. I always plant one or two zucchini plants and usually, I only get a couple of zucchinis out of those plants. I don’t know why zucchini does not grow that well for me considering if you believe everything you read, it should be like a weed.
Well, this year, I decided to plant 3 different varieties of zucchinis, three plants of each. I had 5 plants in total actually grow and oddly enough, I have been picking a lot of zucchini!
So what to do with the zucchini
Off to Pinterest I went to find recipes to use up some of these zucchinis. I found this Lemon Raspberry Zucchini Bread from www.iamahoneybee.com.
This recipe appealed to me because it was something different that just plain zucchini bread or zucchini bread with chocolate chips. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just wanted something different.
I have never baked anything from this site before but I found the list of ingredients to be items I had in the house and the directions were very straightforward with no strange equipment required.
My steps to Lemon Raspberry Zucchini Bread
I mixed the wet ingredients together and then added 1 cup of grated zucchini to the wet ingredients.
Next, I added the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and I used a spatula to gently mix them together just until incorporated. The recipe says to not over mix and I know I’ve read before somewhere else that over mixing causes a tight/rubbery loaf. I don’t know for sure, but I’m not taking a chance so just mix until you don’t see any dry spots.
Fold in 1 cup of fresh raspberries. I liked the recipe on her website because she has a lot of pictures and she thinks ahead to what sort of questions you might have like, can I use frozen raspberries or do I have to use fresh lemons? Sometimes certain ingredients are used for a specific purpose so if something can’t be substituted, it’s nice to know before you waste the ingredients or your time.
Into a greased and floured 9 x 5 loaf pan and it’s ready for the oven.
The result of the Lemon Raspberry Zucchini Bread
It was good! I know zucchini doesn’t really have a flavour and you can hide it in anything but this was a nice loaf to have a slice with some tea. The raspberries were an enjoyable addition and I liked the level of sweetness.
Most of my raspberries fell to the bottom and I should have saved a few to place on top once it was in the loaf pan but I didn’t mind. The bread was very moist in the spots where the raspberries clumped together.
My son found this adorable plate at an antique market. He’s a big fan of cats and it just happened to be the perfect size for this lemon raspberry zucchini loaf!
Isn’t the cat just the cutest! There are initials on the bottom of this pottery. I’m sure someone put a lot of time and effort into making this plate.
So I forgot…
You might notice something missing from this bread though. The recipe calls for a lemon glaze to be drizzled on top once it’s done baking. I completely forgot about that step and just cut into the bread and served it up. Oops. On the plus side, I didn’t really miss it but I’m sure it would have upped the lemon flavour.
Since I have several more zucchinis on my counter, I’m going to make this again, and I’m going to remember the glaze the next time.
This recipe is a keeper!
Do you like fruit in your baking? Try this Blueberry Ricotta Skillet Cake.
