My Berry Good Whole-Wheat Zucchini Loaf

The perfect excuse to turn on your oven + some notes on squeezing your zucchini dry

I was expecting to share a fun new tofu dish with you this week, but the recipe just isn’t quite ready — something to look forward to for next week! Instead, I’ve got something to bake, and for this recipe I revisited my Zucchini and Blackberry muffins from a few years ago and made a couple changes to transform it into a loaf:

Zucchini & Blackberry Muffins

It is still my unpopular opinion that zucchini needs to be drained for zucchini bread… Here, with the longer bake time than muffins, I thought I could get away with skipping the step, hoping that the liquid cook off. But the resulting loaf was damp in a bad way.

I calculated how much liquid I squeezed out and it was about 28% of the zucchini’s original weight. If you really wanted to not drain the zucchini, I suppose you could just reduce it from a pound down to about 12 ounces. But then doesn’t that in some ways defeat the purpose of zucchini bread? Furthermore, I like the texture of the drained version better, with it being a bit more concentrated. Up to you.

Two things I love about this recipe, and that make this loaf a little different, are one, that it uses only whole-wheat flour rather than a combo of that and all-purpose. This imparts such a nice flavor and pronounced, earthy chew. And two, a little bit of molasses boosts the brown sugar flavor, which also compliments the wheat. Especially with the nutmeg, too.

Then there’s the addition of fresh or frozen berries, which could be nuts or chunks of chocolate or anything you please. But because of the berries, the crunchy sugar crust, and that bit of molasses, you can get away with less sugar in the loaf, too.

We all complain about turning on the oven this time of year (or at least those of us who live in poorly ventilated apartments do) but I think this recipe provides a strong case for making an exception.

NOTE: The printable PDF recipe at the end of this post originally included an error, calling for 2/3 cup (120g) olive oil instead of 1/2 cup (95g). The PDF file is now corrected.

Recipe Video