Whole Food Plant Based Zucchini Bread – No oil, no sugar

I’m looking around the interwebs to see if there are any good whole foods plant based recipes for zucchini bread that don’t have any oil or refined sugar.  I thought I’d found one, but the author starts with “Grease a loaf pan ….”  She lost me there.

I poked around some more and I never really saw quite what I wanted.  Some were still using refined white flour and others tons of refined sugar, and I’d like to get away from that the best I can.  What’s the point of prepping, chopping, and eating all these yummy vegetables and fibrous grains if you’re going to do a bag of blow with it at the same time?

Since I didn’t know quite what I was doing, I started by grating the zucchini, since I knew that was going to be a given.  I grated it fairly small on the advice of most people, and based on how I remember my mom doing it when I was but a wee little duffer.

Start by turning on your oven.  In America, we like 350°F.

2 zukes, shredded, then wrapped in a towel to squeeze most of the zuke water out, set aside

Next, I realized that I was going to need some sort of fruity, oil substitute.  Usually you see applesauce or mashed bananas. I was out of applesauce, and the bananas were in the freezer, and I wasn’t going to the store, and I have a bushel (jk) of apples on my counter, so I opted to just whip up some applesauce in the mighty, mighty Vitamix using

2 McIntosh apples, cored and chopped

1/2 c water (aquafaba would be good here)

1/2 tsp chopped fresh ginger

1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground allspice

Blend all of the above starting with the apples until I had a nice applesauce looking mixture.  I stopped once to scrape down the sides and kept blending.  I poured that mixture into a bowl and added

5 heaping, rounded, huge-ass tablespoons of date goo, you can make it as sweet as you want by adding more, hint hint

Go ahead and stir all the shredded zucchini into the apple mixture

In a small bowl I combined the following two ingredients and set aside

3 Tbsp ground flax

Water to cover

3/4 cup chopped walnuts were added to the zucchini/apple mixture

In a separate bowl so they get mixed well goether, whisk the following 6 ingredients

1 cup teff flour

1 cup graham flour

1 Tbsp Baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3 Tbsp tapioca flour

1/2 c oats

Combine the wet (don’t forget your flax mixture) and dry bowls and mix until combined.  Pour into your foil lined baking loaf pan or whatever you have that will hold it all.  Bake for one hour.

Remove from oven and pan and let cool on wire rack.  This is a very lightly sweet bread, full of nuts, fiber and veggies.  I’m liking it.  If you try it, let me know how it turns out for you.