Zucchini Bread

Looking for a new treat to spice up your life? Today we're making the best zucchini bread ever. Full of flavor, perfectly sweet, and so quick too. Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. This zucchini bread is gonna change your life. So let's get started. First off, we're gonna toast those nuts. One and a half cups of toasted walnuts. Always toast nuts when they go into a baked good. It makes a huge difference. By the by, if you do not like nuts, yes, you could totally use chocolate chips instead or in addition to. It's a really forgiving recipe, so don't be afraid to experiment. Okay, give them a rough chop. Don't go crazy because, you know, you'll be cutting the bread into slices. That'll further chop the walnuts, so it's really just to break them up a bit. Okay, scoot those up, set them aside. Now it's time for the signature element, the zucchini. We're gonna use about two medium zucchinis. We want to end up with two cups. Okay, let's go. I'm doing this with my right hand, even though I'm left-handed. Where's my award? Be careful of those fingers. This is dangerous. If you have any extra zucchini left over after this recipe, save it, add it to an omelet. It'll be delicious with some cheese. Okay, one down. Let's just do a rough measure. One-ish cups, two cups. And then this, I'm gonna leave for my omelet tomorrow morning. Let's wrap it up. Right now, we're gonna sift out and whisk up the dry ingredients, starting with two cups or 240 grams of all-purpose flour. In you go. I'm using a scale. It's so much easier than measuring cups because it gives you an exact number every single time. Now, one teaspoon of salt. In you go. You can go a little bit under if you want, and I wanna warn you, do not use super fine salt in this because basically, that'll be like an extra 50% salt. The smaller the crystal size, the more salt you can pack into a volume. Word to the wise. Quarter teaspoon of allspice. I love allspice. Totally optional, though. You can add your favorite spices. Little nutmeg, little cardamom, whatever you enjoy. Cloves, mace, the world's your oyster. One teaspoon of cinnamon. One teaspoon of baking soda for leavening. And then a teaspoon of baking powder, also for leavening. Now we're gonna sift it out. Thank our scale for its service. And just whisk it up. Super easy. If you don't have a scale, if you don't have a sifter, you could just add this right into one bowl. You could make this as a one-bowl recipe. For the wet ingredients, we're starting off with two large, room-temperature eggs. If they're cold, it's gonna be okay. One. Two eggs. To that egg, I will be adding one cup or 200 grams of brown sugar. And then half a cup of regular old white sugar, granulated. Let's give this a nice whisk before we go on. Give me a really nice whisk. And you could totally do this with an electric mixer if you wanted to. I just wanna get that sugar kind of dissolved and really mixed up with the egg. Okay. Half a cup or 120 ml of applesauce. This'll give you a little bit of extra sweetness and a lot of moisture without having to use as much vegetable oil. In you go. Now, half a cup of vegetable oil. This is the fat that's gonna make it really kind of nice and delicious. I just don't wanna use too much because I do not like greasy cake. Ugh, not my favorite. Our last wet ingredient is one tablespoon of a nice vanilla. You do not have to use vanilla if you don't want to. You could scale it down a bit, but it adds a really nice depth of flavor. Okay, now we can whisk it up and move on to the next step. Whisk, whisk, whisk. Whisk it up so all that oil is incorporated nicely. And that's it. Now it's time to combine all of our ingredients together, pour this into that pan, and get this into the oven. It's so quick and easy. Okay, this is ready to come together now. So I have my dry, my wet, and my mixture of zucchini and walnuts. Let's pour the wet into the dry. Wow. Get it all out there. Oh my gosh, the vanilla made such a big difference. I've been hard at work recipe developing this zucchini bread to match Brian's expectations. He loves it, but it has to be as good or better than the amazing zucchini bread his mom makes. Okay, give this a whisk. Doesn't have to be completely combined. Almost combined is good because we're gonna add the rest of the ingredients in. Whoa, whoa. Okay, now you can see totally tons of flour left over in there. We're gonna dump in our zucchini and walnuts and just fold the rest in. Remember, this is more of a cake than a bread, even though it's called bread. You don't wanna develop the gluten too much. If you overmix batters, what happens is that protein, the gluten develops, and after the bake, it'll contract back and become kind of dense and also a little bit tougher. So be gentle with them. That's why we're not mixing this until it's incorporated. It was almost incorporated. Okay, it smells so good, by the way. Oh my gosh. Just using my spatula, folding that mixture in, and scrape the bottom down. That's where all that extra flour was living. This batter is ready. We're gonna pour this into a prepared loaf pan, which is nine by five inches usually. I like to line mine with parchment paper, but you could just grease it up with either butter or vegetable oil or whatever you like, even baking spray. All right, pour that batter in there. So funny because the loaf pan doesn't seem that big, but it can really hold a lot. This is ready to go into the oven, 350 for about an hour. You can use a skewer to test the center. It should come out clean. You could also press lightly, should spring back. In you go. This zucchini bread got the seal of approval. We took a few bites off camera and it is a delicious treat. It is so moist and perfect. It just melts in your mouth, but all that crunch from the walnuts is amazing. If you like this recipe, check out my banana bread. It is amazing. Also very similar, but with bananas. All right, that is a good, good bread. I really hope you get a chance to make this recipe. If you like my videos, hit that like button, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video.