The Home Cook: Zucchini Bread

Many years ago...well, not MANY...but definitely several years ago I worked at a library. Of all my preprofessional jobs (which included nanny, tutor, cashier, customer service wench, salad-bar girl and convenience store babe) it was by FAR AND AWAY my favorite job...ever. If I ever feel the need for a career change, pursing a Masters Degree for Library Science is most assuredly at the top of the list. Really it's not surprising considering that I 1) Love books, 2) Love information of any kind, 3) Love books, 4) Love learning in any shape or form and 5) Love people find information and ...oh, did I mention I love books with an unholy passion. I also could live in a library as long I as I could catch a shower and have some food delivered each day.

While I loved the library for it's more obvious aspects, there was something else to love. The librarians and library technicians I worked with...they loved a good party and parties = food. Lots and lots of food. For a college student it couldn't get much better, go to work, do a sweet-ass fun job, get fed for free and socialize for an hour. Very, very cool. It doesn't hurt that all the people I worked with were each incredibly cool and awesome too. It seemed that each person had their signature dishes, from delish cream cheese dip to bakalava to a large array of heavenly baked goods. One of my favorite things...that sadly didn't show up all that often was Zucchini bread. I suspect the recipe was my supervisor's mother's and it was so, so good. Happily enough, the recipe got copied for me and I've been using it exclusively ever since. Last week I made up four loaves and sent them out to destinations near and far...hopefully they made the recipients smile as much as I do when I make them.

Zucchini Bread
Adapted from recipe from Grace and Sandra L.

3 Eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup Oil
2 cups Turbinado Sugar
3 cups grated Zucchini, peeled or unpeeled
3 teaspoons Vanilla
3 cups All-purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Soda
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Ground Cloves
3 teaspoons Cinnamon

Grease and flour 2 - 9x5" or 3 - 4x8" loaf pans, set aside. Preheat oven to 325ºF.

Mix together eggs, oil sugar and vanilla; stir in zucchini.

Sift together dry ingredients, fold into the zucchini mixture.

Pour in to prepared pans. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes or until bread passed tooth pick test. Remove from oven, set on wire rack to cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans. Allow to cool completely and store in air tight container for up to 3 days (1 week or longer in the refrigerator).

Cook's Notes:

- Turbinado Sugar is by no means necessary, it does however add deeper, rounder sweetness. You can use an equal amount of white granulated sugar. (I discovered this not because of my cooking prowess, but because I was too lazy to make sure I had enough regular sugar before I stared and ended up being WAY short. I used what I had enough of...which accidentally enough was Turbinado/Raw Sugar)

- I grate my zucchini, skin on, wrap it into a tea-towel and squeeze/twist out as much moisture as I can. I'm pretty sure that's standard zucchini baked goods operating procedure. You don't have to leave the skin on, but it makes pretty green flecks.

- You can obviously add nuts or raisins....don't tell me if you do, but you certainly can.