One of the main reasons I began this blog was on the recommendation of a friend. She thought it was silly that I posted pictures of my kitchen adventures on Facebook. “Mandi, just get an Instagram and a blog! Then you can post all the food pictures you want!”
Well, here I am!
In case you’re not aware, one of my favorite hobbies right now is cooking.
I LOVE trying new recipes, cooking for others, and cooking for me.
Since moving into this new apartment, I have embarked on a quest to cook my way through the remainder of my college years– and I have to say I am succeeding!
One of my goals has been to find an easy, delicious, and quick-prep quick bread recipe. I have tried three or four so far, and none have met my high expectations.
I soon recognized that our oven is one of my biggest obstacles. Our oven is calibrated incorrectly, so that I have to set it at 20 degrees higher than the temperature the recipe actually says.
For potatoes, 20 degrees doesn’t really mean much.
For bread, 20 degrees is life or death. (Not to mention the annoyance factor. When you must bake cookies for 20 minutes instead of 11 because of a faulty oven, baking a batch takes a LONG time.)
Here I present the result of my most recent foray into quick bread: Martha Stewart’s Zucchini Spice Bread. (Martha is the mother of all kitchen goings-on, as far as I am concerned!)
This recipe was super fun to put together, simply because it’s easy, simple, and quick! In the time it took for my crazy oven to pre-heat, I mixed up the whole thing and had the bread ready to go!
My favorite part of this recipe was prepping the zucchini. I have never before used zucchini and a box grater together! It makes the most beautiful zucchini easter grass, don’t you think?
Martha does it again– the perfect quick bread batter consistency!
Some of my previous experiments with quick breads weren’t nearly as successful. One batter was so thick it was almost cookie dough. Another was so liquidy, I could have passed it off as a smoothie.
This batter was beautifully smooth, thick, and a gorgeous caramel color. I was almost sad to add the zucchini, it looked so perfect.
Ta- da! A beautifully crusty, dense, sweet, aromatic, DELICIOUS quick bread.
I could hardly let the loaf cool completely before Oren was climbing over me to eat it. He could hardly even wait for me to snap this picture! (Many of my picture attempts feature his hand reaching out to steal a piece.)
That all goes to say… this bread is GOOD.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
Show Martha some love and check out her recipe here.
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby