Thinking outside the bread

Zucchini bread is one of my favorite breakfast items to bake. I found a good recipe a while back on allrecipes.com, and I've been addicted ever since.

The recipe I have makes two loaves, which is great because I can give one away and keep one for myself, heehee. For our Easter brunch, I wanted to make the bread again, but since we were setting the food up buffet style, and people would be picking at stuff all afternoon, I thought muffins might be easier to handle.

I made a full batch of the batter and made one loaf of bread (which I sent to Mike's Nana, who is a big fan of it), and 12 muffins:


You can see pictures of the bread in this post.

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tspn salt
1 tspn baking soda
1 tspn baking powder
3 tspns ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil (for a healthier version, substitute 1/2 c of the oil for 1/2 c applesauce)
2 cups white sugar
3 tspns vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Grease and flour two 8X4 pans. Preheat oven to 325.

Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda and cinnamon together in a bowl.

Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well-combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake bread for 40-60 minutes, or until tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan and cool completely.

I baked the muffins for much less time than the bread, of course. Maybe about 20 minutes. I think I started checking them around 15 minutes and once they passed the clean toothpick test, I pulled them out and let the bread keep baking for the full time.

Note: This freezes very well, although isn't quite as moist after it has been frozen.

Source: allrecipes.com

All dressed up for Easter: