Banana Zucchini Walnut Bread

 
~Jackie~

While I can’t call myself an excellent baker (like my sister), I do enjoy baking this easy bread recipe for me and my fiancé almost every week. We like to have a homemade snack or breakfast to take to work each day and this bread is a delicious and guilt-free treat. The majority of bread and muffin recipes out there have an overload of sugar and butter, exactly what I wanted to avoid when coming up with this recipe. It’s easy to dump a cup of sugar or a pound of butter into something to make it scrumptious, but I took on the more difficult task of cutting the sugar in half and omitting the butter and came up with other sweet and fat substitutes to make this bread delicious and nutritious.

I have been tweaking this recipe for the past few months, perfecting the ideal amount of sweetness and moistness in the bread. The bananas provide this bread with a natural sweetness and the zucchini helps keep it moist without overpowering it with any weird vegetable taste.  The walnuts provide a nice crunchy texture and as an added benefit, they provide you with a daily dose of healthy omega-3 fats. I also add about twice the amount of cinnamon that most recipes call for because of its delicate sweet flavor and has antioxidant benefits. 

It is important to use a hand or stand mixer to incorporate the bananas into the batter so you don’t end up with large chunks. As with most baking, begin by mixing together the wet ingredients then slowly stir in the dry. I add in the zucchini and walnuts at the very end and just stir to combine (you don’t want the water from the zucchini to squeeze out into the batter). I find that the bread turns out the most moist if you bake at a lower temperature for longer. I bake at 325 degrees for about 75 minutes. The bread is delicious on its own, even cold right out of the fridge, but you can warm it up slightly in the microwave and top with butter or cream cheese for an afternoon snack or morning breakfast.