Canning A Lost Art: Simply Scrumptious Zucchini Bread

Welcome back to my canning series! This is the second recipe that uses my newly frozen squash! How better to end squash then with zucchini bread yum! This is definitely one of the kids favorite treats. When I was a kid my mom would always try and hide the fact that there were vegetables in there. I suppose it's counter productive to have veggies in sweets, the sugar cancels most of the good nutrition out, but you win some and you lose some. Thankfully, my kids love their vegetables, so I don't have to push too much.

As I experimented with all of my recipes I baked this and brought it to a potluck. It was collapsed and dense but I still got tons of compliments and had multiple people ask me for the recipe. So this one is a keeper for sure :). The original recipe for the zucchini bread is found here. But I made my own changes that made it simply scrumptious. 

Simply Scrumptious Zucchini Bread

• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Cinnamon Struesel Topping

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup butter

1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2.  In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar.
3.  In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. 
4. Mix wet ingredients into dry. Pour batter into greased loaf pans. 
5. Top with the cinnamon struesel topping. 
6. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans for 1 hour, or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

High Altitude Directions

If you're like me then you have to deal with baking in high altitudes which can be a pain in the butt! Your cookies come out flat and crisp instead of round and fluffy and your bread's are collapsed and dense. Agh it has been the bane of my existence since my move and I LOVE to bake! So I did a lot of experimenting and my husband got to eat a lot of defective cookies, breads and pastries. I'm still working on this recipe if you hadn't noticed my bread collapsed again; but I'm pretty sure I know the reason why. So I'll try and try again. But this batch came out way better then the first. So there is a glimmer of hope!

This website has great advice to get you started on high altitude baking; but I have made my own adjustments as I've experimented throughout the years. I would love to give you exact high altitude measurements but it really depends on what altitude you're at. I'll tell you one thing though I tend to bake my cookies and breads at a higher temperature then what is recommended.

Enjoy this delicious Zucchini bread! I know I will ;)