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This easy moist zucchini bread recipe is a family favourite and a freezer staple. With added cinnamon and crushed pineapple, it is a delicious sweet breakfast or afternoon snack.
Ingredients for Easy Zucchini Bread
In my humble opinion, this is the best ever zucchini loaf recipe! In order to make these cinnamon spiced loaves, you'll need:
- Flour - either all purpose flour or plain flour work in this recipe.
- Ground cinnamon
- Baking soda
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Sugar - superfine granulated or caster sugar are my go to sugars for this recipe.
- Eggs
- Oil - I recommend using flavourless oil, such as vegetable oil, canola oil, grapeseed or rapeseed oils. If you are a fan of baking with olive oil, you can make an olive oil zucchini bread simply by substituting the flavourless oil with olive oil. Do just be aware that this will impact the flavour.
- Vanilla extract
- Pineapple - tinned crushed pineapple is the best option. If you can't find crushed pineapple, you can substitute with other tinned pineapple that you 'crush' yourself either with a food processor or by breaking it up with a knife or your fingers. I've had to do this many times over the years as crushed pineapple wasn't really available in UK grocery stores until recently.
- Zucchini - or in some countries 'courgette'. You want this roughly grated.
How to Make My Classic Zucchini Bread
Grating Zucchini
So, in order to make this recipe, you'll ideally have a reasonable grater for your zucchini.
I once made this recipe using a microplane intended for zesting lemons. It was a long and arduous process. While it did technically work - I would certainly not suggest it!
To grate a zucchini, the best option is a classic box grater, using the side with the large shredding holes (not the mandolin side and also not the finer shredding/grating sides). This will give you nice shredded pieces that are large enough to add a small bit of pleasant texture to the bread.
Easy Batter
The batter for this recipe is a bit odd, but couldn't be easier! This my grandmother's zucchini bread recipe and is a classic of quick mixing.
All you need to do is add all of your wet ingredients - the oil, eggs, vanilla, pineapple, zucchini and also the sugar - to a large bowl and whisk together. I like to use a flat whisk because it avoids bits getting trapped inside the wire cage of a classic balloon whisk.
In a separate bowl stir your dry ingredients - the flour, cinnamon, leavening agents and salt. Add this mixture to your wet ingredients and whisk to combine. You don't want to over beat, but you do want to ensure there aren't any unmixed pockets of dried ingredients.
Preparing Loaf Tins
This recipe is incredibly moist, this means that you may find your zucchini bread stick to the baking pan, if you don't properly prepare your tins. These need to be thoroughly greased and floured, or, better yet, lined with parchment paper.
For a long time I was a baking tin lining skeptic - I didn't see the point. And, I do maintain that grease and flour is usually more than sufficient to get a bake out of the pan.
The amount of moisture here though makes the parchment paper super useful. You can line the tin with overhanging parchment, which will make it easy to lift the loaf out of the tin without having to flip it. The loaves can then be cooled easily on a wire rack. Before gently removing the paper.
FAQs for Easy Moist Zucchini Bread
So this is a question I've seen many times with different bakes - whether or not you're meant to peel the vegetable or fruit before using it. For this bread, there is no need to peel the zucchini first and it can be grated with the skin on. I would normally recommend cutting the end off first and then grate by holding the stem. Once you've grated the full zucchini, you can then discard the stem.
The short answer - anytime! Sweet zucchini bread is a classic dessert loaf. It is great for a sweet and simple breakfast, with the added benefit that there is a vegetable in there. It is also the perfect afternoon snack with a cup of tea.
This zucchini bread with pineapple is an incredibly moist bake. It will stay fresh, wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for about 4 days.
Absolutely! This super moist recipe is perfect for home freezing. In fact, it's a freezer staple in my house. Allow the loaves to cool first, then wrap in a layer of plastic wrap and a layer of aluminium foil. This can then be placed in the freezer, to keep for up to three months.
This recipe is also perfect to make a large batch of zucchini bread muffins or mini zucchini bread loaves for individual freezing.
Defrost at room temperature before slicing and serving.
If you like this recipe, give these other breakfast breads a try:
- Pumpkin and Pecan Bread
- Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips
- Large Batch Spiced Banana Bread
- Nectarine Bread
Zucchini Bread
Equipment
- 2 standard sized loaf pan you can also make this in alternate baking tins such as muffin pans, mini loaf pans, etc.
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour or plain flour
- 1½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 2 cups superfine granulated sugar or caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil or other flavourless oil
- 8 oz tinned crushed pineapple partially drained
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups grated zucchini (aka courgette)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (175C/150C Fan) and prepare two standard sized loaf pans. These can be greased and floured or lined with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and baking powder.
- In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, oil, pineapple, vanilla and zucchini.
- Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients until just combined (avoid over-beating).
- Pour the batter into your prepared loaf tins, filling about ½ to ¾ full.
- Bake until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean - checking regularly after 40 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a baking rack to cool completely.
Nourish
Looks delicious! We have a lot of zucchinis growing in our garden, so this is a perfect recipe for us.
lizmincin
Thanks! Its definitely great for using up an abundance of zucchini this time of year 🙂 have you tried making zucchini fries as well? If you're looking for a savoury option - I'd definitely recommend!
Nourish
We haven’t tried zucchini fries but those sound good too! Thanks for recommending 🙂