Deliciously sweet and spicy, this Pear Zucchini Bread is flavoured with cinnamon and cardamon and sweetened with pureed pears, along with diced pears. Makes a perfect snack or breakfast, along with some coffee or tea. For extra deliciousness, drizzle with Vanilla Pecan Glaze.
This Pear Zucchini Bread requires only a few minutes of prep time. You’ll need to grate the zucchini, puree one of the pears, and dice the others. Other than that, it’s one of those “throw it all into a big bowl and stir together” type recipes.
I adapted this recipe from this Apple Walnut Zucchini Bread recipe on The View From Great Island. She recommends grating the zucchini using a food processor, but I used the biggest size on my box grater and was happy with the result. That site is also where I learned how you can make oat flour and substitute some of it for all purpose flour in a recipe. It’s a beautiful site with lots of yummy-sounding recipes. Check it out but please come back to notnotnutritious.com, as us up-and-coming blogs need your love too.
Pear and Zucchini Bread
Options for Pan Sizes
You can bake this Pear Zucchini Bread in mini-loaf pans as pictured here, or make 6 large muffins (1/2 cup), or a 9-inch bundt pan.
Tips: Vegan versus vegetarian versions
This Pear Zucchini Bread can be made either vegan or vegetarian. The only difference between the two is that the vegetarian version uses eggs versus aquafaba in the vegan version. For more information, see Aquafaba: Easy Vegan Egg Replacer. All of the other ingredients are common ground: the cinnamon, cardamom, flours, pear and zucchini.
Since this is essentially a one-bowl recipe, if you want to make both versions at the same time, you’ll need two big bowls. Honestly though, even if you’re vegetarian, I bet you’ll enjoy the vegan version. You certainly don’t taste the aquafaba, so you might want to give it a try. For this recipe, I used blackbean aquafaba, since I’d just made this super simple Black Beans & Polenta recipe for dinner. I typically use chickpea aquafaba in my baking, but the blackbean aquafaba was fine here, since it’s not a light coloured bread.
Eggs are expensive too! If you're just buying them for baking, aquafaba makes a great replacement, although of course you do need to use up the beans too. I look at it as a bonus, I buy a can of beans, getting 2 cups of beans AND the equivalent of at least 3 eggs, if not more (3 tablespoons of aquafaba equals one egg in baking.)
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Recipe Card
Pear Zucchini Bread
Ingredients
For the Pear Zucchini Bread
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup oat flour {or substitute with more all purpose flour}
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup olive oil {or other neutral cooking oil}
- 4 pears {approximately}
- 9 tablespoons aquafaba {substitute with 3 eggs if vegetarian} See recipe notes for more information about aquafaba
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 cups zucchini, grated
For the Vanilla Pecan Glaze
- 4 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 teaspoon butter or vegan butter substitute
- 1 cup icing sugar
- 4 tablespoons pecans, roughly chopped
Instructions
To Prepare the Pear Zucchini Bread
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare 5 mini-loaf tins, approximately 6 inches by 3 inches. See Recipe Notes for cooking in muffin tins or bundt pan.
- Grate the zucchini. Set aside.
- Core one of the pears, throw it in the blender and puree it. You should have about 1/2 cup of puree. If you have extra, set aside for another purpose.Dice the remaining pears, so you have about 1 heaping cup of diced pears.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, sugar, oil, pear puree, aquafaba or eggs, spices, baking soda and powder. Mix well. Stir in the grated zucchini and diced pears.
- Pour into prepared loaf pans and bake for about 30-35 minutes, until baked through.
To Prepare the Vanilla Pecan Glaze
- Melt the {vegan} butter, then transfer to a small bowl. Stir in the vanilla, and then the icing sugar. Drizzle about 1 tablespoon of glaze per loaf, and then drizzle with chopped pecans.
Wow this looks and sounds absolutely incredible! Love your photos too (:
Thank you! It’s a good one! Hope you try it!
I can’t wait to make this – sound amazing!! And easy too – always bonus for me. Grating, pureeing and mixing – what a fun way to bake. I love your descriptions of alternatives – always learn so much reading your blog – makes me want to try new things!
Thanks, Martina! So nice to hear that!
This bread is soo delicious!! I love making it, its fast and easy and a great alternative to the more traditional carrot cake or banana bread type loaves. I usually make both a loaf and its enough for a few muffins as well. I love cardamom and typically add that for more spice.
Wow – thanks Martina! So glad you like the recipe!
Love it with our without butter. Mmmm
This recipe looks awesome!!! Since I don’t use grain flour, do you think almond or coconut flour would work well as a substitute? Thanks!
Hi – Thank you – You would have alter the recipe significantly to use almond or coconut flour. Coconut flour would be especially tricky as it has drying properties. Let me know if you try though, I’d love to hear the result.
I just discovered this post because Foodie Crush tweeted it. I am so inspired and can hardly wait to try so many of your recipes!
Thanks Hannah! Please come back and tell us what you think!
This is zucchini and pear season, so I’ll make this again! Questions: so oar flour can be substituted 1:1 for wheat flour? Could i use all oat flour? And second question, have you tried freezing it? Im thinking I would like to have some in the freezer. Thanks for the inspiration to deal with zucchini overload!
Hi Ann – You won’t be able to use all oat flour for this, as it doesn’t have any gluten, which is important for the structure – but you can substitute for about 1/4 or a 1/3rd of the wheat flour. On the freezing, yes, I think this would freeze really well. Wrap it up well and it should be fine!