Apple Zucchini Bread with Brown Sugar Frosting -- The Loaf I Always Keep for Myself

August. The month when Duluth remembers that it's allowed to be warm and goes a little wild with it. Seventy-five degrees on Monday, which sent the entire city outdoors as if we'd been released from prison. People in shorts. People in sandals. People swimming at Park Point beach, which means the lake has reached the magic temperature of fifty-eight degrees, at which Duluthians declare the water "beautiful" and everyone from everywhere else declares them insane. I don't swim in the lake anymore. I did as a girl — Lars and Erik and I would ride our bikes to Park Point and swim until our lips turned blue, and Mamma would wrap us in towels and scold us for staying in too long while handing us sandwiches, because scolding and feeding are the same thing in Mamma's vocabulary. Now I walk along the lake and I watch others swim and that's enough. The garden is in full production. I spent Saturday morning picking and processing: tomatoes blanched, peeled, and frozen for winter sauce. Cucumbers packed into jars for refrigerator pickles — vinegar, sugar, dill, garlic, the same recipe Mamma uses, which is the same recipe her mother used, which probably goes back to some farmhouse outside Uppsala where a woman in an apron looked at a pile of cucumbers and thought: vinegar. I also made zucchini bread because the zucchini are doing what zucchini always do, which is produce enough to feed a mid-sized country. Three loaves. Paul got one. Erik got one. The Damiano Center got one. I still have zucchini. I will always have zucchini. This is the curse and the gift of growing zucchini in Minnesota. Astrid called from the Cities on Thursday. She's fifty-seven, my baby sister — though at fifty-seven, "baby" is relative. She's a social worker at Hennepin County, married to a man named Gary who is pleasant and quiet and has lasted twenty-three years by understanding that the Johansson women run things and his job is to be supportive and stay out of the way. Astrid sounds tired. The kind of tired that social workers get, which is similar to the kind of tired that nurses get — the tiredness of caring about people who the world has stopped caring about. I told her to come up to Duluth for a weekend. She said she would. She probably won't, but the invitation is standing, the way it's always standing, the way the door to the Kenwood house is always open because Mamma's door was always open and that's what Johansson women do — we keep the door open and the coffee pot on and the food ready. Dinner tonight: grilled walleye, caught by Erik this morning on the St. Louis River. He brought it over wrapped in newspaper, which is how fish has been delivered to my door since I was a child. I grilled it on the back deck with lemon and butter and dill, and we ate it with new potatoes from the garden and a salad from the lettuce that refuses to bolt despite the heat, bless its stubborn heart. Paul said, "Summer." Just the one word. I agreed.

I gave away two of those three loaves and told myself that was generous enough — one to Paul, one to Erik, one to the Damiano Center — but I kept the recipe, which is the real inheritance. This Apple Zucchini Bread with Brown Sugar Frosting is what I make when the garden tips from abundance into something resembling a dare. The apple keeps it moist even days later, the warm spices make the whole house smell like something Mamma would approve of, and the brown sugar frosting is the part I don’t share the proportions of without some negotiation. If Astrid ever does make it up for that weekend, I’ll have a loaf waiting.

Apple Zucchini Bread with Brown Sugar Frosting

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 55 min | Total Time: 1 hr 10 min | Servings: 10 slices (one 9x5 loaf)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup shredded zucchini (about 1 medium), lightly squeezed
• 1 cup peeled and finely diced apple (about 1 medium)
• Brown Sugar Frosting:
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons whole milk
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat and prep. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and set aside.
2. Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
3. Mix wet ingredients. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, oil, granulated sugar, and vanilla together until smooth and well combined.
4. Combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just incorporated — do not overmix. Fold in the shredded zucchini and diced apple.
5. Bake. Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 50–58 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely before frosting.
6. Make the frosting. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter with the brown sugar and milk, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture just comes to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Whisk in the sifted powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth.
7. Frost and set. Drizzle or spread the warm brown sugar frosting over the cooled loaf. Allow to set for 15 minutes before slicing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 46g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 210mg