Kousa Sweet Bread | Baby Marrow Loaf

Baby marrow (kousa) loaf bread that is easy to make and best in taste with a soft crumb and crunchy crust studded with sugar and pumpkin seeds. Serve with tea or coffee as is or take it up a notch with a schmear of your favourite nut butter or salted butter.

When I shared my Zucchini bread recipe post a lot of you had this question – Can you use baby marrow (kousa) as a substitute for zucchini? Well, they are essentially the same thing. Zucchini, Baby Marrow, Courgettes, Squash, Summer squash, etc. are in the same vegetable family and probably at different maturity stages.

Now, you know can most definitely use Zucchini in this recipe too!

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What is Kousa?

Kousa is the Arabic name for zucchini that are short in size. These are often called Mexican Squash or Grey Zucchini. Kousa is used extensively in Middle Eastern Levant cuisine with minced meat. As this variety is abundantly available here and is cheaper than the Zucchini of the West, I had to try making bread using it.

Let’s look at what you need to make this crusty sweet bread.

Ingredients

Baby marrow: I have used the Kousa variety but you can make this recipe with any kind of zucchini.
egg
oil: you can use olive oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil, melted butter or melted ghee.
sugar: regular white granulated sugar
salt
vanilla extract
cinnamon: you may use allspice or cardamom instead.
baking soda
baking powder
flour: All-purpose or plain flour aka as maida in India.
garnish: demerara sugar and pumpkin seeds

How to make it?

I came across this recipe on Smitten Kitchen by Deb Perelman where she calls this the Ultimate Zucchini Bread. The best part about the recipe is that you don’t have to squeeze out the moisture. It doesn’t end there. You need only one bowl to make the batter. And read this – you add the leavening agents in the wet ingredients!

Yes, you add the baking soda and baking powder to the wet ingredients! I was sceptical at first, but trusted the recipe and wasted no time once the batter was in the pan.

For this recipe, I had halved the portions to bake using my 8×4 loaf pan. I made this recipe twice each time altering the sugar quantity and using a different oil. Both the time the crunchy crust and the specks of zucchini won my heart!

What is zucchini in Malayalam? If you know, please do let me know in the comments!

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