Zucchini Apple Bread-Cake

In typical Tracy fashion, I put something off until the last minute. It was my turn to bring treats for the adults to ECFE yesterday and I knew I wanted to make something with the apples we have from the orchard. A bit of Googling, and I found a recipe for Zucchini Apple Bread. I have zucchini coming out my ears in the freezer, so I thought it'd be a good way to use up two things at once.

So I printed the recipe. Then proceeded to waste most of naptime playing Words with Friends.

We have ECFE at noon. It takes us 20 minutes to get there. At 10:45 I started mixing the batter up. Sheesh. Not surprising I did that, but still. Sheesh.

The recipe says it makes 2 loafs of bread that you need to bake for 50-60 minutes. I didn't have that much time, so I thought maybe, just maybe, if I put the batter in a cake pan it would bake faster. It did! And so, the bread-cake was born. Looks like cake. Tastes like bread. Perfect!

Zucchini Apple Bread

Ingredients

Is it cake? Is it bread?

• Nonstick spray
• 1 cup finely grated zucchini (about 1 zucchini)
• 1 cup grated green apple, peeled and cored (about 1 apple)
• 1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups plus 1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Coat 2 (4 1/2 by 8 1/2-inch) loaf pans with nonstick spray. Line the pans with parchment paper and spray the paper.

Combine the zucchini, apple, brown sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla extract in a large bowl and stir to combine. Add 3 cups flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg to the bowl and mix well. Toss the nuts with the remaining1/2 teaspoon flour to coat and prevent them from sinking. Gently stir in the nuts and the extract.

Divide the batter between the 2 loaf pans. Bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the middle of each loaf comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the bread from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

I omitted the walnuts (yuck!) and made it in a cake pan, baking for about 35 minutes. Very delicious, but I would like a bit more cinnamon and nutmeg flavor. And I'd maybe do 1-1/2 apples, but with my luck that would mess up the recipe and it would be too wet and runny. Anyway,  I figured 18 pieces of cake-bread and 7 points plus per serving. (YIKES!)

And, yes, I made it to class on time. Whew. And, I'm making this my new motto: