Low Fat Zucchini Banana Bread

Teresa Carmody and Vanessa Place have started a garden in their very spacious backyard and already their vegetables are in full swing.  Teresa gave me an enormous zucchini the other day. I'm pretty sure it was the biggest zucchini I had ever seen.    I used some of it for a stir-fry and today I made zucchini banana bread...and I still have half the zucchini left.  

The great thing about breakfast baked goods is that they are more conducive to whole grains.  And I love whole grains.  I love whole wheat flour and oats and bran and barley and brown rice.  I don't really understand why so many people do not like these things.  

As long as I was going to make this bread with whole wheat I thought I might as well go all the way and cut out the oil and sugar.  The idea behind low fat baked goods is this: You can replace the oil with things like pumpkin puree, applesauce, or yogurt.  I've found that applesauce works the best as a fat substitute.  You can replace the sugar with splenda.  You can also replace the eggs with mashed bananas, tofu, or oddly enough, vinegar.  But I like to put at least one egg in to work as the leavening agent.  

A tip: the lack of fat in this low fat recipe makes the end product more likely to dry out quickly so it's best to eat low fat baked goods within 1-2 days.  Also, heating things up in the microwave for 5-10 seconds just before eating helps a great deal.  For some reason, using applesauce as the fat substitute eliminates a lot of these problems.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup chopped sugar free chocolate

1 cup craisins

1 3/4 cups grated zucchini

3 bananas, roughly mashed

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 cup Splenda brown sugar blend

1/2 cup Splenda

1 cup yogurt (greek or regular variety) or applesauce

1 egg

3 teaspoons of cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon on nutmeg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1. preheat oven to 350

2. whisk the eggs and yogurt or applesauce

3. add sugar and mashed bananas and blend well

4. in a separate bowl, combine the remaining dry ingredients

5. mix half the dry ingredients into the egg/sugar/bananas/applesauce or yogurt mixture

6. add the grated zucchini, craisins, walnuts to the remaining dry ingredients and coat well

7. add the zucchini and dry ingredient mixture to the egg/sugar/bananas/applesauce or yogurt mixture and blend until just combined

8. add the sugar free chocolate

9. divide into two loaf pans or 24 muffins tins

10. bake for about 50 minutes for a loaf and about 25 minutes for muffins