Eat My Charlotte
This bread is the marriage of two unlikely ingredients. Who would think to pair zucchini and sweet potatoes together?
Not me.
But when a friend requested that I find a good zucchini bread recipe for her, I found this Zucchini and Sweet Potato Bread recipe from Epicurious.com.
The recipe got rave reviews and received a four "fork" rating from fellow bakers. Convinced, I gave it a whirl.
The bread (really, cake) turned out delightfully dense, moist, and slightly spicy from cinnamon. It tastes similar to carrot carrot cake. Containing both zucchini and sweet potato, I'm eating it guilt-free as I'm counting each slice as two servings of daily veggies. (Dieters, don't quote me on this. I made it up.)
As suggested by many reviewers, I cut the sugar from 2 cups to 1.5 cups. Next time I'll cut the sugar even more because I found it still a tad too sweet. To amp up the health benefits, I subbed 1 cup of white flour with whole wheat flour. A few reviewers suggested using apple sauce in place of the oil – perhaps I'll try that next time, too.
I had way too much batter to fill one loaf pan (but not enough to make 2 loaves), so I made 8 muffins on the side.
Co-workers at CL demolished the bread in one afternoon, which goes to show it's a crowd-pleaser.
Find the recipe below, with my notes in parenthesis.
Have an item you want me to find and test a recipe for? Just leave a comment below.
Sweet Potato and Zucchini Bread
Recipe adapted from Epicurious.com
Makes 1 loaf, and a few muffins
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour (I subbed 1 cup for whole wheat pastry flour)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar (I cut this to 1.5 cups)
3/4 cup vegetable oil (sub in some apple sauce, if desired)
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups grated zucchini (about 1 medium zucchini)
1 1/2 cups grated peeled sweet potato (about 1 medium sweet potato)
1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 9x5x3-inch loaf pan (and line a few muffins tins, too, since you'll have extra batter). Sift first 5 ingredients into medium bowl. Beat sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla to blend in large bowl. Mix in zucchini and sweet potato. Add dry ingredients and walnuts and stir well.
Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 20 minutes (bake muffins 20 min or so). Cool bread in pan on rack 15 minutes. Cut around bread to loosen. Turn out onto rack and cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Wrap in foil and let stand at room temperature.)
