Memories of Baking with Mama

I have a few great memories of baking with my mother. She's a great cook and incredibly talented at anything she puts her mind to so I learned a lot by watching and assisting her. I made it a point in life to try to spend some time in the kitchen with all the people who mattered most to me and become a sort of living recipe book by learning their particular tricks of the culinary trade. I've been fortunate to actually learn a lot of diverse cooking with some really incredible people and if there is one thing besides music that can unite people of all walks of life it is food!

One summer when I was 19 years old, just after I had my second born, I was trying to get another job and decided to venture down to a local plant nursery in hopes that I might be able to start making a little extra money to bring into the household. The nursery happened to be close to my mother's home in Thompson's Station, TN, and since I didn't get to see her that often due to living on the opposite side of the county, I decided to use the opportunity to have her babysit her grandchildren while I went to a job interview. She decided to make the afternoon a little more fun for all of us by introducing us to an incredible recipe and we decided to sit down and make some good old-fashioned zucchini bread!

Ingredients

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp cardamom

1 heaping cup shredded zucchini, (1 medium zucchini)

1/2 cup walnuts

US Customary – Metric

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray an 8×4" loaf pan and set aside.

Using a handheld shredder or the shredding attachment of your food processor, shred 1 medium zucchini. Using a cheesecloth or a fine-mesh strainer, squeeze any excess liquid out of the zucchini and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together sugars with apple sauce, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract. In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir to combine. Fold in zucchini and walnuts.

Transfer batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 50-65 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes in the loaf pan before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

The above recipe is really delicious and produced three loaves. My mom ended up keeping one loaf for herself and her husband, we ate a loaf as a family once they were done baking, and then she had me take the last loaf home for my husband to try. He was surprised because upon learning I was baking zucchini bread he was under the impression that it would be a sort of savory bread and possibly not to his liking.

You can bet his surprise when I showed up with a baked good that was more like a dessert!

I didn’t end up getting hired to the nursery job that day but I think that was probably a blessing in disguise looking back on my life now. I thought it was horribly devastating at the time but I will say the excuse to drive across the county for a job interview made up for when Mom and I were able to create this lasting memory and I developed a newfound love for zucchini bread.