Zucchini Cardamom Bread
Zucchini is flooding our farmers market booth and CSA member’s weekly veggie boxes right now. It’s going to be in season for quite a while which is why I want to create delicious and simple recipes to help and encourage folks to keep on cooking up this tasty veggie. Last week it was the chicken pesto zucchini noodles and this week it’s this incredibly tasty zucchini cardamom bread. I love this bread because it’s sweetened with honey and a little turbinado sugar (which has a subtle molasses flavor). The addition of spicy cardamom and dark chocolate chips takes things to a whole new level. This bread is quickly becoming a Tumbleweed Farm favorite and tastes especially good when dunked into a cup of strong black coffee. We hope you all enjoy this loaf as much as we do. Pour a cup of coffee and dig in!
Cheers from Tumbleweed Farm
Zucchini Cardamom Bread
Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 55-60 minutes Serves: 1 loaf
- 1/2 cup walnut oil (or another neutral tasting oil)
- 1/2 cup honey
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups coarsely grated zucchini (about 1 medium-sized zucchini)
- 3/4 cup all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
- a few hefty pinches of turbinado sugar for topping
Preparation
- Place an oven rack in the middle position of your oven and pre-heat the oven to 350F.
- In a large bowl, beat together the oil and honey. Stir in the eggs, vanilla and zucchini. Mix until well combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom, and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients (being careful to not over-mix) and add the chocolate chips.
- Pour the batter into a lightly greased 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch loaf pan. Sprinkle the top of the loaf with the turbinado sugar. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Cool the zucchini bread in the pan for about 15 minutes, then transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
*Cooking times will very from kitchen to kitchen *Store the bread in foil on the counter for 3 days or freeze it
Looks delicious! Would this work with other kinds of summer squash as well?
Any reason this wouldn’t work as muffins? Muffins always work better for little toddler hands!
I made muffins & just cut the cook time down to 30 mins. Turned out great & made 12 of them.
so happy to hear!
whoa! This looks amazing – I will definitely be putting my zucchinis to good use with this 🙂
Yum! I love zucchini season. Do you recommend a good egg substitute for this recipe?
Any way to make this gluten free? Have you tried ti with a gluten free flour mix? It looks wonderful!
I haven’t tried this with gluten free four. I hope you find a good substitute!
I’ve done several rounds of this with the all-purpose gluten free flour mix from Bob’s Red Mill. It turned out really well. My favorite iteration was the one I baked in my cast iron skillet. It only took half the time and was perfectly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.
lovely!! So happy to hear. I’ll have to try the cast iron skillet method next time! xo
It never occurred to me to use cardamom with zucchinis ! Wow, thank you so much !
Thanks for the lovely recipe. I would never have had the courage to use a full teaspoon of cardamom on my own. I made a few adaptations to the recipe and it turned out lovely.
Hi Andrea! I would love to bake this up! Quick question, though– does the zucchini need to be drained/squeezed of excess moisture first?
nope! The zucchini doesn’t need to be drained and squeezed. Enjoy!
[…] Zucchini Bread The actual zucchini bread recipe I used is here, which I used because I wanted to utilize some of my sourdough starter. If you don’t happen to have sourdough starter, I am sure the link I provided will be a wonderful version, as everything on the Dishing Up the Dirt Blog is fabulous. […]
hello!
as i am of english background, i do not understand the difference between baking soda and baking powder
can you kindly help to increase my intelligence?
thank you!
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate.
OMG, I made two loaves of this yesterday. It is the best zucchini bread I’ve ever tasted! I was out of honey, so used brown sugar. Came out fine. Thanks for the recipe!
I’m so happy you loved this recipe as much as we do! Keep on dishing it up. Hope your staying safe down there and hopefully not getting too smoked out. xoxo
Hi Andrea,
Love the blog and your recipes. Looking to get your cookbook as soon as I can. Living in OR, I’m so happy to have a Farmer’s Market weekly until Thanksgiving. Lots of the farmers I buy from have a winter CSA, so between that and my VERY modest raised bed garden, we get wonderful fresh, local food year ’round. Think I’ll try to use your Diggin’ in the Dirt recipes and see how many I can make through the winter!! Fun challenge, yes?? Have a safe and productive winter.
Do you think this could work using only whole wheat flour? Or possibly spelt in place of the all-purpose? Looks delicious 🙂
I’d add spelt in place of the all purpose so that the consistency stays relatively the same. Let me know how it turns out!
MMMM. This came out SO delicious. Since I’m gluten-free, I subbed general all purpose gluten free flour for the 1 1/2 combined cups of flour + a bit more to balance out how much more zucchini I ended up adding from the size of the zuke!
Added some blueberries and cinnamon to the batter.
Used melted coconut oil instead of a neutral oil.
& only had an 8 x 8 inch brownie pan, but the baking time was the same for the bread pan.
My husband isn’t gluten-free and also thought it tasted moist and delightful “almost like it wasn’t gluten free”. 😉 Thanks, Andrea!
so happy you loved it!
Made exactly as written, and it was SO GOOD!!
This has been our absolute favorite zucchini bread recipe, and believe me, I have tried many! We have been making it all summer with the abundance of zucchini from our garden. THANK YOU! Also, in the heat of the summer it is better to store it in the refrigerator covered in foil and it will be good for a week.
So happy to hear!!
Still have lots of zucchini left from the garden, and I’m trying to use it up! This was so yummy. I ended up using melted coconut oil and added 1 TBSP of cinnamon and a handful of walnuts. I love how prominent the cardamom flavor was! Thank you for the recipe 🙂
Yes!! So happy you loved it too. Your additions sound fab!
I made this recipe with a few tweaks (olive oil v. walnut, cane sugar v. honey, walnuts v. chocolate chips,1 cup all purpose + ½ c. almond flour v. ¾ all purpose + ¾ whole wheat) and I increased the zucchini to 2 heaping cups. It was delicious.