Carrot Zucchini Quick Bread with Toasted Walnuts and Cream Cheese Glaze

When given the theme carrots for today's Food Network challenge for this weeks #FallFeast, I was in a funk. I could not think of anything that I wanted to make; the truth is that I just don't use them a lot. As a side dish I seem to always make these roasted carrots but little else. So when some friends gave me a couple of the very last of their garden zucchini I had an idea. I love the zucchini bread in this recipe and thought why not dress it up a bit with some colorful carrots and mimic the flavor of carrot cake while I'm at it. The resulting Carrot Zucchini Quick Bread with Toasted Walnuts and a Cream Cheese Glaze was a huge hit.

I actually doubled the ingredients and made two. I don't just freeze the entire extra loaf either; I cut it into four portions and freeze those; that way I can have something readily available to eat with just a short defrost in the microwave. That came in handy this morning when the folks of my neighbors up the street dropped by. Yes...I get them all, kids, parents and their parents!

I'm always up for spur of the moment but I really love it when it means offering someone something homemade. Call me old fashioned and I'm OK with that; there is just something about having a moment to sit and chat with friends over some coffee and home baked goodies that can center me when life seems frantic.

As I often do when I'm getting ready to post something, I did a search for carrot zucchini bread to see if it had been made before and found an interesting fact on a large popular website. She had made a zucchini bread at some point a couple of years ago and had a story about how it was widely considered to have first been developed by a well known chef circa the 1970's.

If they were around I would share that tidbit with the authors of this cookbook from a church my parents attended in the 1950's. I'm not sure who actually developed this combination of veggie and spices to make a popular quick bread but it was already popular enough then to have been included by one of the members of Sacred Heart Parish. Seems it's been around a very long time and it really is timeless. I've added a cream cheese frosting in days past but today decided a cream cheese glaze would be enough and it was...and it was easier too; always a bonus.

Coffee and this Carrot Zucchini Quick Bread with Toasted Walnuts? Friends will be lined up at the door! Maybe you can get your kids to eat carrots after all!