2010 Cooking Club Week 39: Courgette Bread

neuro-praxis

Courgette Bread

Hi folks, this is just a quick filler in a week where we have no recipe. I've been making this bread recently and thought I'd share.

It's really a "tea-loaf" rather than a bread - it's like banana bread, or carrot cake. In any case it's simple and extremely delicious. Very good with fresh coffee, and makes nice muffins too, although you will need to adjust your oven times for those. There is no taste of courgette - the vegetable simply adds a wonderful moist texture.

NB: I am using the American cups system, which works by volume. You can go here to change the ingredients to weight. Or you could just use a small cup that you have in your kitchen (or even use a pint jug - half a pint in volume is equal to one American cup), as what really matters here is ratio.

This makes 2 loaves.

Ingredients:

2 cups grated courgette (peeled)
1 cup wholewheat flour
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup golden brown sugar
1 cup chopped nuts/seeds (I used chopped macadamia nuts and sunflower seeds)
Handful of raisins/dried cranberries
0.5 cup of milk (use more or less as needed)
1 cup oil
3 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 165 Celsius. Butter and flour two loaf tins, or cheat like I do, and line them with paper loaf-tin liners.

Sift your flours, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together. Using an electric mixer beat this together with the eggs, sugar and oil, adding a little milk as you need to make a thick batter. Fold in the courgette, nuts/seeds and raisins/cranberries by hand using a spatula or wooden spoon.

Pour the mixture evenly into two loaf tins and bake for 60 mins, or until risen, golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean.



Allow to cool on a wire rack before slicing and having a few moments of courgetty bliss.



Enjoy!

kerash

those loaves look great, cant wait to try this one!

Susie_Q

Brilliant, very unusual and I'm looking forward to giving this a go. Thanks!

Little Alex

neuro-praxis... a very fine recipe! Were you waiting to jump in?

It's just come out of the oven:



I didn't peel the courgettes because I wanted to see what the green flecks look like. :pac: I also added one cup of milk and a half cup of oil instead of the other way around... let's see how it turns out!

...Just had some now and it was delish! Really moist and tasty. Thanks again, neuro-praxis! Lovely photos along with your recipe, too, BTW.

The Black Oil

Made this over the weekend. Very tasty. Thanks OP

unkel

Had too many courgettes in the house and then I saw this recipe. Good way to make one of them disappear

Halved the recipe to make one loaf. Had no baking soda, so used baking powder (double the quantity). Used walnut oil as the oil and used quite a lot of pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts and raisins. I was in a bit of a hurry to get it going, so just threw all the ingredients into my bread maker and chose the short program. When the program finished I threw the whole pan into the oven to finish it off for another half hour. Nice loaf! And as neuro-praxis said, there is absolutely no taste of courgette in the finished product



Will be making that again!

Sorry for the pic. Eat first, camera later

campbellu

Unkel
Just a tip, this type of mix is like a muffin mix-and can be cooked in muffin tins if liked-but need to mix as little as possible, as you didn't use bread soda this may not have mattered as much but if making again, suggest you mix by hand and add all "extras" just at end.
Courgette recipes are great-add zest, lime juice, and a lime cream cheese ICING is sublime...

campbellu

Just another comment! Nigella has a mean Courgette Cake (real Tea Party type) and she sees no need to peel-however my grandson wanted to know what the green bits were and refused to eat it! It was white flour though. With Carrott cake, similar recipes-I tell him its orange (he likes fruit!).

Great recipe.

catho_monster

Had far too many courgettes in the house (accidental shopping misjudgement) and I hate the things, so decided to give this a try yesterday. Turned into a bit of a homage to the festival that was in it, left the courgettes unpeeled, and used mostly pistachios for the nuts.

Really delish with lemon curd...

Thanks neuro-praxis!

Dinkie

3 years later, but finally made this. i used almonds as the nuts and had no wholemeal so used all plain flour. It was really delicious.

Topped it with lime glace icing as i wanted to make it look a little posher.