Banana Zucchini Bread with Oatmeal Streusel

What do I do with 8 old bananas and the second giant zucchini in a week? That was the dilemma I was faced with on Monday evening. I knew that I wanted to make something tasty as a thank you for a work colleague, and the bananas and zucchini seemed like an obvious choice.  I wanted to try making my own recipe combining a few recipes that I already had. I used Aunt Pam's banana bread recipe which I will post someday if she says yes and combined that with this zucchini bread recipe from sallysbakingaddiction.com. 

I have never combined recipes like this before, but I think it turned out really well. It got high praise from my coworker even! :) Give it a try and let me know how it turns out for you.

Banana Zucchini Bread with Oatmeal Streusel

Makes 2 loaves

Bread Ingredients:

Wet

2/3 cup shortening or vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 cups grated zucchini

3 ripened bananas

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

4 Tbsp water

Dry

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 cup chocolate chips

Streusel ingredients:

1/3 cup oat, quick or cook

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp cold butter, cut into pea sized pieces

1 cup of water in an oven safe pan. You will place this in the oven to create moisture for the baking bread.

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350˚ and grease 2 loaf pans.

Combine all of the wet ingredients and mix on medium low until smooth. Add all of the dry ingredients except the chocolate chips. Mix until blended and smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips. Pour into the greased loaf pans. Place in the oven with the tray of water on the bottom shelf and the two loaves on the top shelf and set the timer for 40 minutes.

During that time prepare the streusel. Combine the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and flour together in a medium bowl. Cut in the cold butter with two knives or a pastry cutter. Mix until the streusel resembles coarse crumbs. After the bread has baked for 40 minutes, put as much of the streusel on top of the loaves pushing the streusel into the bread as you are able. Place back into the oven for another 30 minutes. 

Remove after a total of 70 minutes of baking. Allow them to cool for 15-20 minutes before removing from the pans. Allow them to cool for another hour or two before eating.