Spelt zucchini bread with warm spices, walnuts, and chocolate is a delicious way to eat your vegetables. Naturally sweetened and vegan!
It’s another zucchini recipe for you this week! I know that this one isn’t terribly original, but I mostly just wanted a record of this spelt zucchini bread recipe here for myself. We’re still swimming in zucchini over here and our plants show no signs of stopping. Once I get tired of it in salads, rolled into vegan involtini, simply seasoned on the grill, and in this loaf, I’m going to grate and freeze it as I learned in this video from Megan Gilger. So simple! Sometimes I steam slices of it and freeze the slices for smoothies. The zucchini adds body to a smoothie without an overpowering flavour–good way to sneak in vegetables :)
This spelt zucchini bread has a lot of warm spices, toasty walnuts, and chocolate chunks (of course!). I love it when I get to eat my vegetables with chocolate. As I often do with my recipes, I chose light spelt as the base of this loaf. Whole spelt and light spelt flour are the default flours of choice in our house, but I provide some suggestions for substituting in the notes of the recipe below :)
My partner, the dogs and I are still up in cottage country this week. Lots of hanging out by the lake, reading, playing cribbage, and cooking simple seasonal food. It’s been nice and interesting to have nothing of real urgency to do. I can be a busy body, so it has been slightly challenging haha. Mark laughs at me because I follow a rigid schedule even when we go on vacation and the scheduled items in question are leisure activities. I am working to undo this constant compulsion towards productivity. I know that it is healthy and necessary to just be sometimes (a lot of the times!) :)
Wishing you well and sending my best this week.
Vegan Spelt Zucchini Bread with Warm Spices, Walnuts & Chocolate
Equipment
- 8×4 loaf pan
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cups shredded zucchini (from roughly 1 medium zucchini)
- 1 ½ cups light spelt flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¾ cup coconut palm sugar
- ¾ cup unsweetened apple sauce
- ⅓ cup neutral-tasting oil of choice (avocado, sunflower, refined coconut etc)
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- ½ cup walnut halves, chopped
- ½ cup dairy-free chocolate chunks or chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 8×4 loaf pan and then line it with parchment paper. Lightly grease the parchment as well and set aside.
- Gather the shredded zucchini in a clean kitchen towel. Over the sink, gather up the edges of the towel and squeeze out as much moisture/water from the zucchini as you can. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the spelt flour, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt, cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg.
- In a medium bow, whisk together the coconut palm sugar, apple sauce, oil, and vanilla extract. Add this wet mixture to the larger bowl with the flour mixture. Using a rubber spatula, mix until just combined with a few little streaks of flour.
- Add the shredded and wrung out zucchini to the batter along with the walnuts and chocolate chunks. Fold these items in until they are evenly distributed.
- Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan and flatten the top of the loaf. Bang the filled loaf tin on the counter a few times to fully settle the batter.
- Bake the vegan spelt zucchini bread for 60-70 minutes, or until a toothpick/paring knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the zucchini bread from the oven and let it cool in the loaf pan on a wire rack.
- Let the zucchini bread cool completely before removing from the pan and slicing.
Notes
- You could easily substitute the following flours 1-to-1 for the light spelt: whole wheat pastry flour, whole kamut flour, whole wheat flour or whole grain spelt flour (being mindful of the fact that whole grain flours will make the loaf more dense), all purpose flour, and gluten-free all purpose flour (King Arthur makes a great one).
- My favourite light spelt flour is this one from Flourist.
- You can substitute the coconut palm sugar with regular cane sugar or brown sugar here. I don’t think maple syrup or agave nectar is a great idea as we really need the structure from a granulated sweetener. Since we have a lot of wet components in this loaf (apple sauce and the zucchini), the granulated sweetener helps us avoid a gummy texture.
Hello
Thank you for great recipes and beautiful pictures…
Is it advisable to use pumpkin purée, or evenly mashed cooked carrot instead of applesauce?
Thanx again
I think both of those would substitute fine and perform in the exact same way! They may not be as sweet as the applesauce, so that’s just something to consider with the taste of the final loaf!
-L
Thank you, Laura!! I used up a half cup of “mature” plum jam instead of apple sauce and it worked so well!
This is the best zucchini bread I’ve ever had! The spices and spelt flour work so well together and give it just that little something extra. I subbed the coconut sugar for brown sugar but otherwise made as directed and it’s amazing! Thanks for this recipe!
This recipe is absolutely delicious!! So so glad I doubled the recipe. Thank you ☺️
this is delicious zucchini bread!
The cardamom really adds a nice flavour combined with the cinnamon and nutmeg. The smell reminds me of fall and my favourite chai latte
I made a double batch of this last week- one loaf plus 12 muffins! It’s so good; the spices are perfect! We’ve been enjoying it for breakfast with a little almond butter on top. Thanks for another great recipe!
I just made this bread today but as muffins and with just 1/2 cup sugar and white whole wheat flour and they are sooooo good! Perfectly moist, sweet (even with less sugar!), and I love the spices. I will definitely be making it again!
I have made this, your pumpkin bread, and your banana bread and they are all amaaazing (in loaf and muffin forms!). They will be recipes that I revisit over and over again!
This came out a bit mushy for my taste. I used coconut oil and doubled the recipe. It might be that my spelt flour has a different texture than the one you used. Im also not the most precise baker tbh! But my husband and toddler still gobbled them up!
Can this recipe be used for muffins?
Hi Cherri,
I think this would work fine as muffins! I would start checking them for doneness around the 20-25 minute mark.
-L
Love this bread!!! Zucchini is in full force in the garden, so we whipped up this bread this week and it is delicious!!! Moist and flavourful from the warm spices and just sweet enough. It’s toddler approved too! I’ll be making this for the rest of the summer.
This bread is the best! Simple to make and my whole family loves it, even my kids. This recipe is now my go to zucchini bread.
This bread is absolutely delicious! I actually substituted the applesauce for two ripe bananas and 1/4 plant based buttermilk and it worked out great. Since bananas are pretty sweet I also only put 1/2 cup of sugar and it turned out perfect. Thank you Laura, our whole family loved it!
Made this last night with gluten-free all purpose instead of spelt and omg omg omg this is so yum! Moist, not overly sweet, and the chocolate chunks are making my life.
Thanks so much for this recipe! I was looking for something reasonably healthy and easy to eat while breastfeeding, and this was a winner – delicious
This is such a perfect zucchini recipe! I couldn’t find spelt flour at the store so I used whole wheat flour and it’s delicious. My loaf didn’t rise as much as the one pictured; it remained more flat and dense. I’m guessing this is because of the whole wheat flour? Either way, now I need to find spelt flour so I have an excuse to make this again!
I always come back to makin this bread when I have zuchinni on hand such a great recipie