Zucchini...Industrial Style

If you haven't heard...we are growing a garden. Not just a cute little flower garden or a box of herbs, like I have previously been known to grow, a real vegetable garden. This garden has been a whole lot of fun for our family, and is probably the biggest garden we have ever grown. We are starting to feel like real Kentucky farmers with this garden!

Since we had tons of zucchini the size of my arm, I decided it was time for a little summertime favorite: zucchini bread. However, when one grated zucchini is enough to quadruple the batch, what can you do but bake a zillion loaves?!

We also happened to have some carrots that needed to be used up, so my sister and I grated those too. We had more grated veggies than I knew what to do with! In the end I had four different variations on a basic zucchini bread recipe, about 8 full size loaves, 4 mini loaves, 3 dozen muffins, and 2 dozen mini-muffins. Its a good thing we have a lot of friends to give our creations to, or we would be a little sick of zucchini bread in the next few weeks.

Here is the recipe I used (in its basic form it is from my surrogate grandmother, Geneva):

1 c. oil

3 eggs

2 c. sugar

3 tsp. vanilla extract

2 c. zucchini

3 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix together the oil, egg, sugar, vanilla, and zucchini. In a seperate bowl, sift flour, soda, powder, salt, and spices together. Slowly combine the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients being careful to only stir until barely moistened. Bake for approx. 60 mins.

**To make the variations, all I did differently was add "mix-ins." To create carrot-zucchini bread I added 1 c. carrots, 1 tsp. nutmeg, and 1 tsp. cloves to the basic recipe.

I divided this recipe into three bowls before it was all the way combined and in one bowl added 1 c. choc. chips, 1 c. pecan pieces (you could also use walnuts, but no one at my house will eat them), and 1/2 c. raisins to the batter.

In another of the three bowls I added just the chocolate chips and nuts (some people at my house won't eat cooked raisins). You could do any combination of these mix-ins or add other ingredients like crushed pineapple, chopped apple pieces, cinnamon or carob chips, etc. Let your imagination roll! :)

All variations turned out yummy. Even with all those loaves, we still have about 8 cups of grated zucchini in the freezer! Yikes! I better think of something quick! Ah, the bounties of a garden! :)