Healthy Zucchini Bread
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This Healthy Zucchini Bread Recipe is an easy, delicious treat. Low calorie, low sugar, gluten free & so delicious – everyone will love it! This post is sponsored by Bob’s Red Mill but all opinions are my own.
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Click here to read my policy and more about affiliate links. This post was originally shared in 2017 but has been updated since
Healthy Zucchini Bread is one of my favorite veggie loaded treats! It’s light, fresh, and the perfect way for using up loads of summer zucchini—though honestly, it’s delicious any time of year.
Zucchini may seem like a bland veggie, but when done right, it creates the most perfectly moist, fluffy bread.
Most zucchini bread recipes are loaded with sugar to compensate for the subtle flavor of zucchini, but I decided that a few chocolate chips + honey would be a better choice. Instead of using butter or canola oil, this recipe uses just a little bit of olive oil and almond milk to keep it moist. You could also add some chopped walnuts for added healthy fats!
Using whole grain oat flour gives the bread a light, fluffy texture with a slight nutty flavor while also adding fiber and protein. And let’s not forget—this bread has a full cup of zucchini baked right in, adding a sneaky veggie boost without anyone noticing.
Liz’s tips for zucchini bread
- Grate your zucchini with a standard box grater. Place your box grater over a bowl to catch the zucchini shreads.
- You do not need to peel the zucchini for zucchini bread! It will soften in the bread and add extra fiber and nutrients.
- Make sure to squeeze water out of the zucchini for bread. Once you’ve grated zucchini, take a paper towel or clean dish towel and squeeze out as much excess moisture as possible. Otherwise, you’ll wind up with soggy zucchini bread.
If you’re looking for other healthy zucchini recipes – check out these Healthy Zucchini Recipes!
Ingredients
SUBSTITUTIONS
To make gluten free: replace regular oat flour with Bob’s Red Mill Certified Gluten Free Oat Flour. You can also try this Gluten Free Zucchini Bread!
To make vegan: replace 1 egg white with 1 flax egg. Sub honey with maple syrup
To make nut free: Sub almond milk for oat milk or dairy milk
To make lower in sugar: omit the chocolate
Flour: You can replace oat flour with whole wheat flour or white flour but your bread might be a little more dense. I would not recommend almond flour or coconut flour. If you don’t have oat flour on hand, blend or process old fashioned oats or quick cook oats until they are a flour like consistency.
Milk: Any milk will work – almond, oat, regular dairy milk, soy, coconut, etc.
Spices: You can omit the ground ginger and nutmeg if you don’t have any. Add a little bit more cinnamon to compensate!
Vanilla Extract – You can omit vanilla extract from the recipe and it will still turn out fine.
Nuts: You can add in chopped pecans or walnuts. Raisins would also be a nice add in!
Healthy Zucchini Muffins: Pour the batter into greased or lined muffin tins. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center of the muffin. You can also check out our Healthy Zucchini Bread Muffins
Mini Loaves – I haven’t tried making this recipe into mini loaves, but I think it would work! Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center of the loaf pan.
Chocolate Zucchini Bread: This Gluten-Free Chocolate Zucchini Bread is a delicious variation!
Zucchini Banana Bread: Try our Zucchini Banana Bread.
How to make Healthy Zucchini Bread:
- Before doing anything, grate your zucchini. Squeeze out as much water as you can from the zucchini. I typically use a paper towel and wring it out over the sink.
- Gather all ingredients
- Mix together your wet ingredients.
- Stir in your dry ingredients.
- Add in chocolate chips (optional but highly recommended!)
- Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake. After 40-45 minutes you’ll have perfectly cooked zucchini bread.
I love to make this on Sunday to enjoy for breakfast/snacks during the week. It’s great with a big cup of coffee in the morning, or as a snack with PB on top in the afternoon.
Storage
Storing Zucchini Bread: You can store this bread covered on your counter for a few days, but I recommend keeping it in the refrigerator for maximum freshness!
It will last up to a week in the refrigerator – but will lose its freshness after about 3 days on the counter.
How to freeze Zucchini Bread: You can slice this bread and individually wrap it or freeze it whole. To defrost a whole loaf, take it out the night before you’d like to enjoy it and set it in the refrigerator. When you’re ready to serve, pop it in the microwave.
If you’re defrosting a single slice, you can put it directly in the microwave or toaster oven until it is warm.
Gluten Free Zucchini Bread FAQ
Your zucchini bread shouldn’t fall apart. Make sure you let it cool completely before removing it from the prepared loaf pan. Also, make sure you squeeze any liquid out of your zucchini before baking!
More Healthy Bread Recipes:
We love healthy bread recipes. Here are some of our favorites:
Healthy Zucchini Bread
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 egg room temperature
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1/2 cup almond milk
- 1 cup shredded zucchini squeezed to remove water (about 1 medium zucchini)
- 2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Whole Grain Oat Flour use gluten free if necessary
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 + prepare a greased 8×4 loaf pan.
- In a large bowl mix together olive oil, egg, vanilla extract, honey, almond milk and zucchini.
- Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients (oat flour, spices, baking powder/baking soda, salt)
- Fold in mini chocolate chips.
- Pour batter into greased loaf pan + top with additional chocolate chips if desired
- Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes, or until top of bread is golden and cake tester comes out clean. Allow bread to cool completely for at least 20 minutes, remove from pan + enjoy!
Video
Notes
- To make gluten free: replace regular oat flour with Bob’s Red Mill Certified Gluten Free Oat Flour
- To make vegan: replace 1 egg white with 1 flax egg. Sub honey with maple syrup
- To make nut free: Sub almond milk for oat milk or dairy milk
OH mi goodness thai sounds like a treat for Zukes Season…. or earlier
It’s great year round!
Recipe looks good, could I add more zucchini into it? Have lots of Zucchini lol.
I wouldn’t recommend doing that. It will add too much moisture. You could double the recipe and freeze the bread or check out one of these for other ways to use it up!
Hello!
Great recipe. Although, the middle of my loaf completely sunk! Any ideas why you think?
Still tastes great!
Hi Petra- I’m sorry but I’m not sure why that would happen. Did you substitute any ingredients? It could’ve also happened if you used old baking soda/baking powder.
Have to in ever tried to make this in a crockpot? My oven is not hearing properly so can’t baked I n it
I don’t think this would work in the crockpot, sorry!
Very moist and excellent healthy snack recipe to use up all those garden zucchini’s. Only change I made was using coconut oil instead of the olive oil.
So glad you enjoyed it, Kathy! It’s a great way to use up summer zucchini!
I turned this recipe into muffins and they turned out great. I love that there is zucchini in them and they are super moist. I froze some and they were good after being frozen as well. I would have liked them to be slightly sweeter so next time I think I’ll add a few more chocolate chips or a little more honey— that might just be personal preference though 🙂
Thanks, Mindy!! Glad you were able to make them into muffins 🙂 We definitely kept this on the lower sugar side but you can for sure add more chocolate!
I’m a big fan of making muffins instead of loaves. How long did you cook them?
I haven’t tried it but most muffins you can bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.
I was attracted to this recipe because I am watching calories And this was low fat. I doubled the recipe and baked 24 muffins. Other changes I made included using 2.75 cups oat flour (all I had) and the balance of 1.25 cups white whole wheat flour. I used skim milk (again what I had) instead of almond mild and used half honey and half Sucralose for sweetener. As I was squeezing the moisture out of the grated zucchini,,I had a brainstorm of using my salad spinner and it worked great. Recipe turned out great. Ended up being only 82 calories/muffin!
Love those substitutions, Donna! and what a great idea to use the salad spinner for the zucchini!! that’s genius!
This recipe is so easy to make and so delicious! Husband approved also!
Thank you so much, Morgan! So glad you liked it!
I made this recipe today and it came out incredible!! This bread has ingredients that make my body and stomach feel GOOD without depriving my sweet tooth.. a win win!
I used pecans instead of chocolate chips for a bit lower sugar, the bread came out moist, fluffy, and left the house smelling like heaven. Trying your other recipes soon!
Thanks, Jessica! So glad you enjoyed it!
My kids wanted banana bread but had no bananas. I looked up this recipe and made it. My kids love it!! I did have to grind my oats from bob mills because I didn’t flour. Only thing I need to to is grind the oats a little more. But we’ll be making this again!
Thanks so much!! This is a great substitute for banana bread. This Healthy Lemon Blueberry Bread is also delish!
I tried this recipe yesterday and it is soooo good! I didn’t have Bob’s Red Mill oat flour so i just threw some oats in the food processor and it was so much easier than I thought. The bread is made with all good and healthy ingredients but feels like such an indulgence – would be good for breakfast or dessert! I heated a slice up and topped it with peanut butter – can’t wait to have it again tonight.
So glad you liked it, Christina! Thank you so much!
My zucchini bread turned out AMAZING. I subbed the oat flour for whole wheat flour (was all I had) and it was perfect. Still super fluffy and moist. 🙂 Also used regular sized chocolate chips because that was also the only kind I had at the moment. The honey and chocolate chips add just the right amount of sweetness.
So glad you liked it, Margo! Enjoy!!
So delicious! I used a flax egg, subbed in 1/2 cup brown rice flour for some of the oat flour, and used 1/3 of maple syrup. I left out the chocolate chips. Next time, I’m going to add 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to the wet ingredients (I understand it helps vegan bread rise) I’m trying to find the perfect healthy vegan zucchini bread for a baby shower brunch and this one is a winner!
So glad you liked it, Audrey! And that all those substitutes worked for you 🙂
This is one of my favorite zucchini bread recipes. I really like how you use honey instead of regular sugar. When I bake, my goal is make whatever I’m baking as healthy as possible. I also really enjoy baking with oat flour. The bread was so soft and had the right amount of sweetness! 5/5
So glad you like it, Cynthia! I love to make things healthier when I bake too and honey is such an easy swap!
So good! I made with maple syrup instead of honey and it came out perfectly. I also liked the suggestion of adding a few more chocolate chips on the top, that made it look so pretty when it was done. Would highly recommend!
So glad you liked it Vicky! The chocolate chips make it so much prettier on top 🙂
Do you think it would work to replace the almond milk with water?
Hi Kim – I’ve never tried that but it might work! You could also replace it with other non-dairy milk or regular milk if you need to!
I made the vegan version tonight. I made my own oat flour too. I didn’t have chocolate chips so I added dried apricots for some extra sweetness. It was very good but think it would be better with the chocolate chips next time.
That sounds super yummy, Kim! I’m glad you liked it! Definitely try it with the chocolate chips though – it’s SO delicious!
I made this last night and we loved it! Easy to make, great texture and not too sweet. I left out the chocolate chips (personal preference).
Glad you liked it, Joni! You totally don’t need the chocolate chips – it’s yummy with out as well!
This is the best healthy zucchini bread recipe ever! The oat flour worked great! Will definitely be making this more in the future!
Thank you so much, Kassi!! I’m so glad you liked it!
I just made this using spelt flower because I didn’t have oat flower and really did t feel like making it from my oats and it came out amazing!!!! Just perfect and delicious!!! Thank you for this!!!
I’m so glad you liked it, Maria!! i’ve never tried baking with spelt flour – now I want to!!
CAN YOU REPLACE THE LIQUID SWEETNER WITH
GRANULATED SWEETNER THANK YOU. PAT.
Hi Pat – I’m sorry but I haven’t tried this. I would stick with the honey!
This zucchini bread is awesome and pretty easy to make! I made them into mini muffins for the perfect on the go snack.
Love that you made them into mini muffins!! That’s such a fun breakfast or snack!
Wonder if it will turn out ok using bob’s Paleo flour?
I’m sorry but I’m not sure! Paleo baking is so tricky and I’ve only tried it with the ingredients in the post… if you give it a try let me know!
This looks amaaaaazing! I want a slice now!
You have to try it!! So yummy!
Yum, this looks so good and I love that it is a healthier verison!! I love mini chocolate chips and put them on everything 🙂
Me too!! Sometimes I just eat them when I’m craving something sweet!