Category: Breads and Pancakes

Grandma Emma’s Zucchini Bread

Recently at the coffee table after worship service I took a piece of zucchini bread that Dale offered me. I am not a fan of vegetable breads or cakes. I like vegetables that look and taste like vegetables, whether roasted, steamed, sautéd or stewed, not baked into breads, cakes or cookies. My theory is that these recipes were invented by parsimonious housewives as ways to get rid of excess vegetables.

I am not sure, but I think that I was introduced to zucchini bread when we lived in Kentucky. If you think zucchini grows well in northern Wisconsin, you haven’t watched it grow in Murray, Kentucky. You get up the morning when it’s a cool seventy-nine degrees to pick those lovely eight inch zucchinis you wanted for a nice sauté only to discover that they are now a foot long and three inches in diameter.

Even people who didn’t plant zucchini were always looking for ways to use up all of the big ugly green things strangers kept leaving on their doorsteps. Hence the plethora of zucchini bread, cake and cookie recipes shared by friends and neighbors.

Most zucchini breads are a bit too sweet for my taste, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Dale’s offering was really very well balanced. When I asked about the recipe, he told me that it was his wife’s grandmother’s recipe. When I asked, Pegi said that she would send it to me, and it arrived promptly.

Dale baked the bread, but it is Grandma Emma Melrose’s recipe passed on to her daughter and granddaughter. Here’s how to make a three-generation classic that just might end up in the recipe collections of the younger generations in your family.

INGREDIENTS:

3 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
3 tsp. vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups peeled & grated zucchini
1/2 cup nuts or raisins or both

PROCEDURE:

Peel and grate two cups of zucchini and set them aside. If your zucchini is more than two inches in diameter, cut it into quarters and remove the seeds before you grate it. Chop the nuts if necessary and set them aside.

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease two or three loaf pans. The batter is enough to make three four by seven-inch or two five by nine-inch loaves. Cut parchment paper to fit on the the bottom of each pan to help with removing the loaves from the pans.

Beat the eggs, vegetable oil and sugar together, then beat in the vanilla. Sift the flour, salt, soda, baking powder and cinnamon into the liquid ingredients, stirring thoroughly between each addition. Fold in the grated zucchini and nuts or raisins.

Bake on the center shelf in the oven at 350º for fifty to sixty minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick after fifty minutes. If the toothpick comes out clean, the bread is done. Remove the pans from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes, then tip the loaves out onto a rack to finish cooling.

NOTES: Pegi noted that they used Wesson oil and King Arthur flour, but the bread turned out fine made with store brand canola oil and flour. Adding raisins will make the bread sweeter. Like Dale, I added only chopped nuts, and it was just sweet enough and delicious.

Mom’s Drop Doughnuts

When I found my mother’s recipe for drop doughnuts in her recipe box, I was tempted to publish it on “Courage In The Kitchen” exactly as Mom wrote it down. I thought that readers might enjoy seeing how good cooks shared recipes when I was growing up. The recipe consists of a list of ingredients but no instructions for putting them together.

This minimalist format is rather common for recipes written by experienced cooks from that period. It’s as if they were sharing their recipe with a friend who they knew was a also a good cook. The assumption seems to have been, “If you don’t know how to mix up doughnuts, you shouldn’t be trying to make doughnuts like mine.”

Having been cooking for quite a few years and with the added advantage of remembering how my mother mixed various dough batters, I have provided some guidance that results in pretty good drop doughnuts. Drop doughnuts are a kind of doughnut hole. You make them like you do hush puppies—drop tablespoonfuls of dough into hot oil and cook the doughnuts until they are golden brown and done.

They are particularly easy and fast to make, which may explain why Mom made them so often.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
2 large eggs
2 T shortening
1 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla
Oil for frying
Sugar and cinnamon for dusting the doughnuts

PROCEDURE:

Put the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon together in a sifter. Put at least an inch of high temperature cooking oil into a saucepan and begin warming it over moderate heat.

Melt two tablespoons of shortening or lard in a small pan over low heat or microwave the shortening in a small bowl. While the shortening is melting, beat two eggs in a mixing bowl until they are lemon colored. Whisk the milk, vanilla and melted shortening into the eggs. Sift the flour mixture by thirds into the liquid, stirring well between each addition. You should end up with a stiff but moist batter.

When a candy or deep fry thermometer shows that the oil has reached a temperature of 370º, drop heaping tablespoons of batter into the oil. Since the batter cools the oil, don’t fry more than six or seven doughnuts at a time in an eight inch saucepan. Turn the doughnuts so they cook evenly and drain them on paper towels.

Put a quarter cup of white sugar and a half teaspoon of cinnamon in a clean paper bag. Close and shake the bag to mix the sugar and spice, then sugar the warm doughnuts and put them on a platter or plate that you can keep your eye on as you continue frying more doughnuts. Failure to take this precaution can result in a severe shortage of doughnuts, especially if there are hungry people in the house.

NOTES: Canola or corn oil both work fine for frying drop doughnuts, but my mother often used lard, which works well too. Not all people like sugar and cinnamon on their doughnuts. Omit that step if you prefer.