Double Dessert Night

Just as Siri, Felicity, and I had finished whipping up the vanilla pudding for our Puddin’Pie, our next door neighbor left this lovely green thing on our porch. I just looked at it and said, “Well, I guess I’m making zucchini bread.”

For you know, that this is all you can do with a zucchini of this size. So it was double dessert night and nobody was complaining at my house.

Zucchini Bread

This recipe was taken from All Recipes.com. The user comments were really useful. I ended up using 1 cup of brown sugar to replace one cup of white sugar and doubled the zucchini used (4 cups). It turned out to be TWO zucchini breads (We did one for the neighbor without chocolate chips and one for the kids WITH chocolate chips). Visit the original recipe here. This is my variation on it:

• 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
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract (or more)
• 4 cups grated zucchini

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Puddin’ Pie

I know you’ve had this dessert before. It’s so easy and delicious. My favorite backup for a yummy summer treat. It’s vanilla pudding, cool whip, graham cracker crust, and fresh berries. I tend to go for the premade pie crust but I admire anyone who makes it from scratch. I mean, it is just graham crackers and butter afterall. I also buy the no-sugar vanilla pudding and the fat free cool whip.

• 1 Graham cracker crust
• 1 vanilla pudding package/2 cups of milk
• 1 cool whip
• package of strawberries (and or blueberries, raspberries)

Put together vanilla pudding as instructed on the package. Pour into crust and let sit in the fridge for an hour. Top with Cool Whip and cut Strawberries/Berries on top.

It looks pretty and it’s effortless! Very summery with the berries on top, huh? If you wanted to get fancy you could add glaze to the top of the strawberries (It would also make the strawberries last longer).

And of course, the best part, eating it! Yes, it makes a mess:).

With all these recipes, I have been compiling them in my little recipe box. Pretty soon I’m going to take them to get laminated to keep them from spills.