Zucchini Carrot Bread and Muffins

Oh Henry -- always sneaking into my photos.

I had this really strange urge to bake zucchini bread last night. It's really strange because I'm normally a morning baker: I wake up, let the dog out, and get cooking. Last night however, I was raring to go. It could have been the two glasses of wine in me, or the fact that I was procrastinating from packing for my trip, but at 10:30pm I started the bread, and before midnight I was enjoying some warm, moist zucchini carrot goodness.

This stuff is tasty; a little too tasty because I managed to have probably 3 muffin's worth already. But it's okay. I had a long workout today -- I'll just keep telling myself that. With this recipe, I tried to replicate zucchini cupcakes that my Mom makes; hers are topped with a cream cheese frosting so I certainly can't compete with that, but take it for what it is -- a quick bread. These hit the spot.

I used my favorite gluten-free flour mix which is made up of superfine brown rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch and one cup of sorghum flour to add a bit more nutrition to the bread. I imagine millet flour would work well too in place of the sorghum flour. Most people associate walnuts with zucchini breads, but I only had a half of cup on hand, so I used pecans too, which turned out nicely. I have a mix of sweeteners (brown sugar, vanilla sugar and agave) in this recipe too. I hope to play around with this in the future and try only brown rice syrup, or only agave to cut back on the refined sugar.

Zucchini Carrot Bread/Muffins

1/2 cup Earth Balance buttery spread (dairy-free) or butter if you can have it
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vanilla sugar
2 tablespoons agave nectar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups shredded zucchini and carrot (2 zucchini and 2 small carrots; wringed of water with a towel)
2 cups gluten free flour mix
1 cup sorghum flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon xantham gum
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped pecans


Preheat oven to 335 degrees.

Grease and flour (I used rice flour) 2 loaf pans, or 1 loaf pan and 6 muffin tins.

Mix the Earth Balance (or butter) in a mixer until creamy. Add the sugars and agave and mix until combined. Next, add the eggs, one at a time. Then, add the vanilla. Lastly, mix in the zucchini carrot mixture by hand until combined.

In another bowl, add the all of the flour, baking soda, baking powder, xantham gum, salt and cinnamon and whisk until all of the dry ingredients are combined.

With the mixer on low, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until you have a thick batter, then fold in the nuts.

Pour into loaf pan, or muffin tins. I baked the loaf for about forty-five minutes and the muffins only took about twenty minutes. Keep an eye on these, as baked goods with agave can look "toasted" quite quickly.

To keep moist, store loaf and muffins in plastic or glass containers in the refridgerator.