No matter how healthy we try to eat, most of us end up falling back into old habits. You know how it is—adding a little too much butter here or a little extra salt there can easily start to add up. We all know that we need to eat more vegetables but we can’t find it in ourselves to really make salads every day (or it’s hard to make our children eat salad at the very least). Sometimes, this means getting crafty with how you get the vegetables in.
Fortunately, the recipe we have today is a strange one that manages to sneak an unlikely vegetable into a dessert dish! Although we’ve likely all enjoyed lemon cake or lemon loaf before, have you ever tried baking zucchini into it? These two key ingredients actually compliment each other well—and the whole thing is still sweet enough to be a great dessert.
Here’s what you need:
- 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 3/4 cups of sugar
- 1 cup of finely shredded and unpeeled zucchini
- 1/4 cup of cooking oil
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons of lemon zest
- 1/2 cup of powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest
Here’s what you do:
1. First, get your oven preheated to 350 degrees. As that’s warming up, get a medium mixing bowl and throw in flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set it all aside.
2. In another mixing bowl, throw together your sugar, zucchini, cooking oil, lemon juice, egg and lemon zest. Make sure you don’t squeeze or dry your zucchini before you add it to the mix! Stir everything together until it’s evenly combined.
3. After that, you should have a nice, gooey batter for your loaf! Get a greased bread pan and spoon all of your batter into it. Once it’s full, bake it at 350 degrees for 50 to 55 minutes until it’s golden brown.
4. Take your loaf out and let it cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Once it’s cooled off a little, take it out of the pan and let it cool completely.
5. Finally, mix together your half cup of powdered sugar, two tablespoons of lemon juice and two tablespoons of lemon zest to make your icing (you can also double the dose if necessary). Let your icing set for a little bit and then spread it over your loaf and serve!
Once it’s done, you may want to let the lemon zucchini bread sit for a while to let the glaze harden on top of the bread and for all the flavors to settle. When you eat it, though, you’ll see just how delicious this recipe really is. Any fans of lemon-flavored desserts will not be disappointed here—and the addition of zucchini is subtle and won’t affect the flavors you typically expect.
Have you made this recipe yourself? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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