Zucchini is in season. Whether you’re growing it in your garden or you just picked it up for a good price at the farmers market, chances are you have more than you need and stumbled upon this article while trying to find what to make with it. Really the possibilities are endless (I love chocolate chip zucchini muffins), but one thing that always seems to be a hit with my group of friends is zucchini bread. It’s easy to make, easy to jazz up and easy to freeze. Here are a few add-ins you can bake with your bread to please all taste buds.

easy-zucchini-bread-recipe

First off, a basic zucchini bread recipe is easy to find online. Searching for one with chocolate chips and then just substituting the chips for other treats is a good way to get started. My favorite way to make the bread is in a bundt pan. Just be sure to butter or oil both the inside and the outside ring of the pan, then lightly coat it with flour. This keeps the bread from sticking. It also looks much fancier than a regular old loaf if you intend to share with other people.

  1. Chocolate chips- Yes, I mentioned this a few times already. But it’s a good way to get kids to slightly eat their veggies, right? They want the chocolate but the zucchini is in there somewhere too! Even better- any kind of baking chips (peanut butter, toffee, white chocolate) will do just fine!
  2. Fruit- blueberries are great in zucchini bread (half blueberry/half chocolate chip is amazing). But other greats I’ve tried include bananas, apples, peaches, and strawberries.
  3. Carrots- shred up some carrots and substitute half of the zucchini called for in the recipe with the carrots instead.
  4. Extracts- zucchini bread recipes usually call for vanilla extract. Most of the time, I don’t have this so I throw in whatever coffee creamer flavor is in my fridge instead! The imitation Bailey’s ones are pretty great! Anyway, extracts come in many flavors and brands like McCormick and J.R. Watkins have plenty of affordable extracts you can experiment with when baking. For zucchini bread, I would recommend the almond, coffee (try this one!), orange, caramel, cherry, hazelnut, pumpkin spice (mmm), or rum flavors.
  5. Candy- Yes, candy. I know this is similar to #1 but if you have a kitchen appliance that chops food pretty fine, like a Ninja, then this is a great way to add flavor to your bread. I love buying Reeses Pieces and throwing them in the Ninja until they become a fine powder. Hershey’s “Pieces” line also makes an Almond Joy product that would be great for this recipe. Chop them up and mix them in, or just drop them into the batter whole!
  6. The Dry Stuff- shredded coconut, various types of nuts, dried fruits, oats, the possibilities here are endless and you probably don’t even need to leave the house for extra supplies. I once threw some Cap’n Crunch cereal into a birthday cake, so maybe look into that!

zucchini-bread

There’s also the option to keep it simple and skip all of these suggestions. But if you do that, consider a great tasting spread like frosting, Nutella, peanut butter, almond butter or jam!

 

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Brenda Hillegas

Brenda Hillegas lives in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia where there are plenty of restaurants and delicious smells wafting through her windows daily. When she's not busy working as the editor for the city's That Music Mag, she attends Celtic and Irish festivals, drinks wine and likes to craft. She's obsessed with pop culture and useless 80s-90s television trivia. Follow her on Twitter @Shamrockenroll and check out her Saturday Night Live blog campsnl.blogspot.com.
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