Back to School Zucchini Bread

Today was the first day back to school for my son - who started his freshman year of high school. My daughter will start tomorrow as a Junior. The weather was very appropriate for back to school, and decided to be a nice fall-like day- overcast and all. No, I am by no means ready to say goodbye to our very short summer season, and my tomatoes are definitely not, but it was nice for the house to be cool.

I decided that today would be the day to get started on baking up some of my giant Zucchini, and turning them into some yummy breads and cake. I thought it would be a nice treat for Joseph to come home to the house filled with nice baking smells and a homemade after school snack. So I got to work and baked three loaves of zucchini bread and a yummy chocolate zucchini cake for our dessert this evening.

I love baking zucchini bread- the whole house always smells so good. I thought I would share with you the recipe that I have always used, I am not sure which one of my family members passed this recipe down to me, I just know that it has been on the same recipe card since I was a young homemaker, and probably came from my grandma or mother. This recipe always turns out well. I always make extra for the freezer- when the loaves are cool, pop them into a freezer bag, and into the freezer, it is great to have these on hand, just pull them out of the freezer to thaw when you are ready for another loaf of bread, great time saver.

Zucchini Bread

Preheat Oven to 325 F.

3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons cinnamon

Beat eggs, then mix in the rest of the ingredients until combined. Pour into 3 greased bread pans. Bake at 325 F. for 45 minutes to and hour.

I Bake these in Pyrex bread pans, and also sometimes a muffin pan or a square 9x9 inch cake pan- just add a little frosting and your bread is now a cake. I used to grate my zucchini by hand, but since I like to make this recipe in bulk, I started last year, using a food processor from my mother-in-law to grate the zucchini, since the zucchini comes out in fairly big pieces, I put the grated zucchini, along with the eggs and oil, in my blender, and blend them all together to break down the zucchini more. This works very well, and saves me a lot of time.

I also made a chocolate zucchini cake- I only started making chocolate zucchini cake a couple of years ago when I found a great recipe online. I had had chocolate zucchini cake at a birthday party when I was a child, and loved it, but never got around to getting a recipe. Boy am I glad I found this recipe! Wonderful, moist, chocolaty, and easy to make with inexpensive ingredients. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com - turns out great every time- I serve mine with a simple white frosting. I would highly recommend this recipe to everyone.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/chocolate-zucchini-cake-iii/detail.aspx

The bread was a perfect after school snack, and we are all looking forward to chocolate zucchini cake for dessert.