Beet Bread, the quick kind

Beets are awesome: shredded raw or roasted and warm, I rarely have them around for long enough to do anything with them other than just eating them straight up.  Luckily, I've been busy and not cooking much, so when i got to them this week, my beets were tired, shriveled, and soft. So I decided I would bake with them!

Here's my thought process: zucchini bread is delicious. So why wouldn't beet bread be equally delicious?

I scoured the interweb for some beet quickbread recipes, but to my surprise, could not find any.  So I took a zucchini bread recipe from epicurious and ran with it. I still can't get over how beautifully color-saturated the batter was, and how all that color dissipated after being cooked. But nonetheless, the bread was delicious! (pictured above with a basic cream cheese-lemon spread, the slightest bit sweetened).

Recipe
Adapted from Epicurious.com's Sweet Potato and Zucchini Bread:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
  
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cups sugar (1.5 would have been better)
  
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups grated beets (raw) 
• 1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
  

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together all the dry ingredients (flour through salt) in medium bowl; mix together all the wet ingredients (sugar through vanilla) in a large bowl, then add the beets, then the dry ingredients and then the walnuts.
I cooked them in mini loaves, so it only took 40 minutes. If you're making a big loaf, count up to 80 minutes of bake time (or until a toothpick comes out clean).

As noted in the recipe, next time I'll use a bit more sugar (I cut the amount in 1/2 from the recipe I was following) and I think I might try using zucchini along with the beets because i think it would be pretty... And i have to play around with the spices a bit more... any recommendations are welcome!