Renee’s Lemon Zest Zucchini Bread
Every once in a while Mãe made us an extra special treat: Her delicious Zucchini Bread. It's not really bread, it's cake, in the grand old style of tea cake. But the "bread" part is actually important, at least for the shape of it, I found out recently. See, I made this recipe for the website, and long story short, I didn't follow my own recipe, and it was a bit of a disaster. Yes, that's right, I cheated on my own recipe, folks. Needless to say, you should always try adhering to a recipe at first, even if you have bold ideas for the future. There may be a reason things are the way they are.
I make all of the recipes on Reddish Radish. Over the course of a lifetime, some recipes I made often with my mom and others I didn't. As I dig through all of my favorite recipes, some of them I'm making for the first time in 15 years, now that I feed people for a living. I verify amounts, test my own instructions, and make any edits I need to make. When I made this cake for the first time as an adult, I didn't have bread pans in the house. I will have bread pans soon. My mom, who lives next door to me does have bread pans, but it's freezing out and there's snow everywhere, so I didn't want to go over to her house. So I made the cake in a casserole dish.
It was a mistake to make one big cake instead of two smaller ones. Why? Because it took forever to cook. Like an 8"x10" deep casserole dish. It took about 90 minutes to fully bake through. Never fear, reader! The cake was still delicious, even with a slightly too-crunchy top. That's the nice thing about cakes and breads, I guess. You can screw them up pretty badly, and still wind up with a delicious dish. The other important thing to note is to make sure you cover the cakes in foil, and remove the foil only for the last five or ten minutes of baking. That will make sure you have control over how dark and crunchy the top of your cake gets.
So you definitely need bread pans for this recipe. What else have we learned? Well, the original recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of sugar, but I cut it down to two. At two cups, I find this recipe to be plenty sweet. I actually can't imagine making it any sweeter. Dialing down the sweetness lets all of the other flavors shine, and this cake definitely has a lot of flavors. The other tweak I made was to use one cup of whole wheat flour, to two cups regular flour. Because the zucchini is so moist, and this recipe calls for squeezing lemon juice over the loaves, this is a supremely moist cake recipe. The moisture is more than enough to balance with whole wheat flour. Try dialing up (or down) the amount of whole wheat flour, and see how you like it!
Lastly, don't forget the lemon zest and vanilla. You don't want to skimp on the vanilla for this one. It really stands out, especially against the cinnamon and lemon. For the lemon zest, I use the same hand grater that I use for the zucchini, except I use the fine grater side. Just make sure you rinse the lemon skin really well, and don't forget to remove the sticker! For the lemon juice shower at the end, I just use the same lemon from which I harvest the lemon zest. This cake is excellent paired with tea, whipped cream, or butter. My husband likes to warm a piece in the toaster and put butter on it... personally I find this too rich but I can see how butter would taste great with the other flavors.
Depending on how much you love lemon, use two lemons instead of one. My husband said two is way too much. If you're not sure, start with one lemon to be safe, and edit from there! If you're having a bout of LPR, just use the lemon zest and skip the lemon juice.
Makes two bread-sized or pound cake-sized loaves.
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees.
Wash and cut off the ends of your zucchini. Coarsely grate the zucchini. Use the zest grate on a standard cheese grater (or a lemon zester tool) to grate the zest off of one lemon.
Beat the eggs with a whisk until fluffy. Add the vanilla, sugar, oil, lemon zest, and zucchini.
In another bowl, mix in your flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder (ideally with a sift).
Add the wet mixture to your dry mixture and incorporate. Add the nuts and give the batter a final mix.
Butter and flour two pound cake (or bread loaf) forms. Pour your batter into the forms. Lay a few walnut halves onto both cakes.
Cover in foil and bake at 350F for about 1 hour until the cake no longer jiggles when you shake it and until a knife comes out cleanly. If you're using one large cake dish, instead of two loaves, bake for ~90 minutes.
Remove the foil for the last ten minutes of baking. Removing the foil will make the top cook much faster, so if you desire a crunchier top, remove the foil sooner.
When the cakes are cooked, squeeze the juice of one lemon over them (1/2 lemon per loaf), and garnish with sprinkled sugar or lemon zest.
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees.
Wash and cut off the ends of your zucchini. Coarsely grate the zucchini. Use the zest grate on a standard cheese grater (or a lemon zester tool) to grate the zest off of one lemon.
Beat the eggs with a whisk until fluffy. Add the vanilla, sugar, oil, lemon zest, and zucchini.
In another bowl, mix in your flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder (ideally with a sift).
Add the wet mixture to your dry mixture and incorporate. Add the nuts and give the batter a final mix.
Butter and flour two pound cake (or bread loaf) forms. Pour your batter into the forms. Lay a few walnut halves onto both cakes.
Cover in foil and bake at 350F for about 1 hour until the cake no longer jiggles when you shake it and until a knife comes out cleanly. If you're using one large cake dish, instead of two loaves, bake for ~90 minutes.
Remove the foil for the last ten minutes of baking. Removing the foil will make the top cook much faster, so if you desire a crunchier top, remove the foil sooner.
When the cakes are cooked, squeeze the juice of one lemon over them (1/2 lemon per loaf), and garnish with sprinkled sugar or lemon zest.