My oh so gracious neighbors have been blessing me greatly with fresh fruits and veggies from their garden.  Oh I just can’t wait till I have a garden of my own.  The joys that come from growing your own produce just seem fabulous.  Someday, sigh, I will have a massive garden and amazing fruit trees.  I will spend my summers canning, pickling, jelly’n, and eating free goodness.  Someday.  Back to the point.  I have had some zucchini for a couple of weeks now and finally got around to making some bread with it.  Oh. My. Gosh.  It is so good! I will be calling this recipe….

{Zucchini Cake Bread} 

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 1/4 cups white sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup grated zucchini

1/2 cup milk

1.  Grease and flour pans.  I used four mini pans.

2.  Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda and cinnamon together in bowl.

3.  Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, milk, and sugar together in a large bowl.  Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well.  Stir in zucchini until well combined.  Pour batter into prepared pans.

4.  Bake for 50 (ish) minutes.  Cool in the pan on rack for about 20.  Remove from pan and completely cool.  Or if you are anything like us, you won’t be able to wait for it to cool, so just go ahead and dig in.  

Bonus:  This “cake” bread freezes wonderfully.  We ate one loaf in about 10 seconds flat.  I quickly wrapped the remaining loafs up and threw them in the freezer before the ole’ hubster got ahold of another loaf.  I figure we’ll pull it out on a “special” occasion.

Who doesn’t love hot dogs mixed in their mac & cheese?  Could there be anything better?  I may be slightly kidding, but it is decent enough to eat on those nights when you have a mental block and don’t know what to make for dinner.  When I was in college, my awesome grandma would tell me she was cooking dinner and this is what it would be. Hot dogs mixed with some mac & cheese.  Pretty fancy, eh? Well, I was feeling bad because my boys hadn’t eaten many veggies for the day.  I spotted a zucchini sitting on my counter and had a light bulb go off in my head.  I shredded the zucchini and added it to the mac & cheese.  Brilliant!  Want to know what would have been even more brilliant? Peel the zucchini first.  My boys took one look at the “green stuff”  and paniced.  After enticing them to try it, they loved it and chowed down.  So to save yourself, just go ahead and peel the zucchini first.

Peanut butter is my weakness.  I eat it way more than I should, but I just can’t seem to get enough.  I was looking through my Deceptively Delicious cookbook the other day and knew I had to try these Peanut Butter and Banana Muffins mainly because of the peanut butter in them.  They are scrumptious.  How could they not be though?  

{Peanut Butter and Banana Muffins}

1 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup carrot or cauliflower puree (I used carrot)*

1/2 cup banana puree**

1 large egg white

1 cup whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

*To puree your veggies:  Steam, then throw them in the food processor until smooth.

**To puree for banana:  mash with a fork then put in food processor until smooth.  It will look like baby food when it is done.  

{Step 1}  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Coat a 12-cup muffin tin with cooking spray or line with pper baking cups.

{Step 2}  In a large mixing bowel, mix 1/2 cup of brown sugar with the peanut butter, the vegetable and banana purees, and the egg white, using a wooden spoon.  

{Step 3}  Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and stire.  Add to the bowl with the peanut butter mixture and stire just to combine (the batter will be lumpy- do not overmix).  Add the remaining 1/2 cup of brown sugar and stir once or twice.  

{Step 4}  Divide the batter among the muffin cups and bake until the muffins are lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center, 15 to 20 minutes.  Turn the muffins out onto a rack to cool.

{Step 5}  Store in an airtight container at room tempurate for up to 2 days, or wrap individually and freeze for up to 1 month. Personally, I like them better cold.