I was searching for zucchini recipes and found this one in Food Network’s site.  It’s by Paula Deen.  The original recipe yields 2 loaves, so I scaled down the ingredients to 50% to bake 1 loaf and used bananas to make it eggless. 

Ingredients:

(PART 1)
All Purpose Flour 1.5 cups
Baking Powder 1/4 tspn
Baking Soda 1/2 tspn
Cinnamon 1/4 tspn ( I used even little because I’m not a big fan of cinnamon)
Salt 1/2 tspn

(PART 2)
Zucchini peeled and grated, 1 cup (I used 1 medium zucchini, the gratings measured nearly 1.5 cups)
Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips 1/2 cup (I used mini chocolate chips)
Pecans 1/2 cup, chopped

(PART 3)
Vegetable Oil 1/2 cup
Granulated Sugar 3/4 cup
Bananas 2 medium size, mashed
Vanilla essence 1 tspn

Procedure:
1. Pre-heat the oven at 350 F.
2. Combine ingredients in Part 1 and sieve them.
3. To this add the ingredients in Part 2.
4. Combine ingredients in Part 3 in a blender/or cream it using an electric hand mixer.  I used my magic bullet blender to blend it.  Add this mixture to the above dry ingredients and mix it well.  You may add a little milk, if you feel that the mixture requires some more liquid.  I had to add a couple of tablespoons of milk because I increased the quantity of zucchini.
5. Pour it in a greased bread loaf pan.

6. Bake it at 350F for 50 min or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.
7. Cool the bread in the pan for 30 minutes before transferring it to a wire rack.  Wait for another 30-45 minutes before slicing the bread.

The bread is very moist and tasty.  Click the images for a bigger view.

My Notes:
1. This is similar to the carrot cake recipe, but uses zucchini and chocolate chips instead.  Next time I will add both carrots and zucchinis.

2. I feel that the Magic Bullet Blender is very versatile.  I bought it 2 years back to puree steamed vegetables and fruits in small quantities for my infant son.  But it does a lot more.  The recipe booklet which comes along with the blender is also very useful.  I have made muffins and soups as mentioned in the recipe book and it has come out very well also.  Even in the above recipe I add all the ingredients in Part 3 in the blender’s big jar and gave it a few pulses and it’s ready within few minutes.  I find it more easy than using an electric hand mixer.

3. Use Vegan chocolate chips/carob chips to make this bread100% vegan.

I love to create my own recipes. Since I’m a novice baker, I’m trying only other’s recipes for now. I just try to tweak it here and there. So for the time being my experiments are limited to Indian cooking only. That’s how I put together this recipe. May be some of you know this one already, but I’m very happy because, I tried it for the first time and it was very tasty.

I asked my husband to get 1 zucchini to try the oven baked zucchini fries, but he bought 4 instead. Anyway it worked out good because I was able to come up with 3 new recipes. They are zucchini pappu, chocolate chip zucchini bread and zucchini soup. I’ll be posting the other 2 very soon. I wanted to post the zucchini bread first, but when I mentioned about the zucchini recipes to my friend Laksh of Lakshmusings, she told that she would try zucchini pappu. So I thought I should post that one first.

Ingredients:
Zucchini 1 medium size, peeled and grated (don’t drain the water)
Tomato 1 medium size, cut into small pieces or 1/4 cup crushed tomatoes
Toor Dal 1/4 cup, pressure cooked
Sambar Powder 1 teaspoon
Green Chilli 1 medium, slit it
Salt 1/2-3/4ths of a teaspoon according to your taste
Water 1/4-1/2 cup as required

For Tempering:
Oil 2 teaspoons
Mustard seeds 1/2 teaspoon
Channa Dal and Urad Dal 1 teaspoon each
Curry leaves 3-5 leaves

Procedure:
1. In a sauce pan add the oil and after it heats add the rest of the tempering ingredients.
2. Once the dals turn golden brown add the grated zucchini, slit green chilly, tomato puree/tomato pieces and sambar powder,little water and close the lid. Zucchini itself has water content in it, so just add little water to make sure that the zucchini does not stick to the bottom of the vessel while cooking.
3. Once the zucchini is done add the cooked toor dal and let it boil for another 2-3 minutes.
4. Garnish it with cilantro.

Variation:
I have tried the exact same recipe with ridge gourd and bottle gourd too.  They also taste very good.  You may also add a teaspoon of tamarind extract with the zucchini, if you like it sour.

My Notes:
Nowadays I use crushed tomatoes a lot in my cooking. It’s very economical when you compare it with the price of fresh tomatoes and also saves you time in the kitchen. Once you open the can pour the contents into another jar/plastic box and store it in the refrigerator. One 32 ounce can lasts for 2 weeks for me and it’s only 79 cents, when a pound of fresh tomatoes is anywhere between $1.50 to $2.00 and they also rotten quickly. Moreover I came across one more fact that cooked and canned tomatoes have more lycopene than the fresh ones. Anyway I’m not telling “don’t buy fresh tomatoes”, it’s just my observation. I thought I can share it with everybody here.  Moreover my husband does not like too much of tomatoes in his diet, so this works for me.  His favorite dish with tomatoes is Tomato Rice, I use crushed tomatoes in that too.