Zest for Life
Hobbled by a (for the love of the FSM, let it be a minor) hamstring injury and not one for Spinning with a sub, I stayed my butt at home for the majority of Tuesday, which meant I got two dozen monographs edited pretty quickly, leaving me plenty of time to have some misadventures in the kitchen. Woohoo!
Zucchini Rocks
I've mentioned my zest for zucchini a few times now, I believe, Gentle Reader, and have even shared with you the questionable-looking but still quite yummy chocolate chip-zucchini cookies of my own making (er, merging of recipes). Since I had four zucchs left over after from my first brush with zucchini desserts and still aching to make some zucchini bread of some sort, I decided to make the most of my Tuesday late afternoon and make the most of my leftover zucchini by whipping up some zucchini-orange bread.
Pan de Vida
Sad to say, but this culinary misadventure was my first attempt at making any kind of bread from scratch. Yep, my bread-making adventures have been limited to loafs out of a Krusteaz box. But that's not terribly surprising, Gentle Reader, since we're not big breakfast/snack/dessert bread eaters here at Chez Boeckman-Walker. We love banana bread, but aside from the boy, we're not banana eaters, thus we never have mushy, icky bananas around from which to make banana bread. If I'm going to make some kind of breakfast/snack/dessert carb thing, it's going to be in the form of muffins. And Krusteaz fat-free muffin mixes are easy and taste pretty darn good.
The challenge with this recipe would be making it true: Yes, that would include whipping out the 'ol box grater (because my Microplane zester I'm supposed to get as a gimme for previewing the 2007 CI annual is on back order, darn it all) and zesting one of the two big oranges we bought last night when we took Joy to an HEB so she could get some boo-boo supplies for her step-son, who hurt his leg in a bizarre golf cart-tipping accident. In addition to one tablespoon of fresh orange zest, I needed one whole tablespoon of freshly squeezed orange juice. Naturally, I chose the larger of the two oranges since I had no idea how much juice and how much zest I'd get from a midsize orange.
Now I'd read in one of my issues of CI a quick kitchen tip that involves wrapping one's box grater/zester with some plastic wrap to better collect zest or not make it such a pain in the butt to scrape off the box grater/zester. Did I dig out the tip and follow it? Hell no. I didn't want to take the time to track down the issue, nor did I want to make my first use of the zesting side of the box grater so...fancy schmancy. No, I was determined my first go would be the old-fashioned way.
And the old-fashioned way is crappy and painful.
"Painful?" you ask, Gentle Reader?
Yes, painful. While attempting to salvage as much zest as I could, I scoured the skin off the pads off my right and left thumbs and index fingers. So when I went to squeeze half the zested orange, its juice slid right into my abraded fingertips. Ouch!
Ahh, the stupid things I do just to provide you, Gentle Reader, with quality culinary misadventures....
I Love My Food Processor, But...
...I wish its grater/shredder disc did a better job. Or perhaps not such a good job. My lovely Queasy Art three-cup food processor really is a time-saving device (it whipped out a cup of grated/shredded zucchini in, like, 3 seconds), but because the grater disc works so well, I wind up with really, really long strands of grated/shredded zucchini. That don't break up when you add them to batter or dough. And don't break up when you cook them. So you wind up with these icky-looking green strands in your desserts that look really, really unappetizing--but really aren't noticeable when you're chewing and swallowing.
Thus this late afternoon I wound up with bread dough that looked like this:
Just like my chocolate chip-zucchini cookies,, my zucchini-orange bread dough looked like something that came out the business end of this wiener dog my older sister once had who loved to eat my uninflated balloons. (Ahh, but Noodle was a great dog.) Did I let that deter me? Hell no. But am I now on a quest to figure out how to grate/shred zucchini in my food processor without the long-stranded end product and still enjoy its time-saving goodness? You bet your ass!
If It's Nice, Do It Six Times
The original recipe calls to split the dough between two 8" x 4" loaf pans, but (A) I don't think I have two pans of that size and (B) I didn't want that big of a loaf, let alone two of 'em. So I dug out the half-dozen mini-loaf pans I'd bought three years ago or so to make a train cake for the boy's second birthday and put them to use (for something other than taking up space in my baking utensils drawer, although the topmost one does hold all my measuring spoons, so I guess the do serve a purpose in there).
Because I used such small pans, I was pretty sure the loaves wouldn't need the full 50 minutes of baking time called for in the recipe. And The Faudie was right! Woohoo! I set the timer for 25 minutes, figuring that after half the baking time, I could get a good idea of how much longer the loaves might need. Sure enough, 25 minutes was exactly how much time they needed.
After ten minutes of chillin' out in their pans, I dumped each loaf out and let them chill completely naked on the wire rack. Mmmm...six times the amount of loafy love!
Of course, the smell of freshly baked bread appeals to damn near everyone, and the residents (human, that is) of Chez Boeckman-Walker were helpless to resist its allure. Shortly after I dumped the loaves from the pans, I cut into one so we could all have a taste.
If only I could upload scratch-and-sniff pictures for you to enjoy, Gentle Reader! But, alas, you'll just have to make some for yourself. Here's the recipe, as it appears in the July 2008 issue of Cooking Light:
3 C all-purpose flour (about 13 1/2 oz.)
1 t NaCl
1 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 C sugar
1/2 C egg substitute
1/3 C canola oil
1 T orange zest
1 T fresh OJ
2 C shredded zucchini
1/2 C coarsely chopped walnuts
1/2 C powdered sugar
2 T fresh OJ
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, NaCl, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk to mix well, then make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.
- In a second bowl, combine the sugar, egg substitute, orange zest and OJ.
- Pour the liquid mixture into the well in the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.
- Fold in the zucchini and walnuts.
- Divide the batter between two 8" x 4" loaf pans coated with cooking spray.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of each loaf comes out clean.
- Cool the loaves 10 minutes in their pans on a wire rack, then remove them from their pans to continue cooling on the rack.
- If desired, combine the powdered sugar and two tablespoons of OJ with a whisk to make a glaze to drizzle over the still-warm bread.
Nutritional Info
Calories: 145
Fat: 5.1 g
Saturated fat: 0.4 g
Protein: 2.8 g
Carbs: 22.5 g
Fiber: 0.7 g
Na: 142 mg
The Faudie's Futzings
- In lieu of all-purpose flour, I used 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat and 1 1/2 cups of white whole wheat, as I so often do. Sure, the whole wheat flour gives the end product a nuttier flavor, but I like it and so does the husband. (The boy has yet to complain, but just as he has with cilantro, I'm sure he'll make his enmity known soon enough.)
- Because I used whole wheat flour, I had to increase the amount of baking powder by half (for 1 1/2 teaspoons) and used a wee bit more OJ since whole wheat flour tends to make things more dense and dry.
- Because my knife skills suck, my coarsely chopped walnuts were more like powdered and pulverized walnuts. Oh well. One of these days I swear I am going to sign up for one of the knife skills classes Central Market and Whole Foods offer.
- As I mentioned previously, I used much smaller loaf pans and halved the baking time with absolute success.
The bread is quite tasty, don't get me wrong. However, it's missing something. Cinnamon, perhaps. Or nutmeg or clove or some such similar spice.
Or perhaps the whole wheat flour obliterated whatever sweetness the orange zest and OJ might have imparted--which is highly unlike, I know, Gentle Reader, since only fake orange flavor is sweet. And no, I didn't make the glaze. I was too busy eating supper to remember the glazing bit. Bad me.
While I had the food processor out, I went ahead and grated/shredded up the remaining three and a half zucchini, bagged 'em and set 'em up to freeze for later use. I might just start thawing one of those two-cup bags so I can whip up the zucchini bread recipe my dear friend the world's greatest Spin instructor made and shared with me (and got me started on this zucchini kick).
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