I just received what I hope is the first of many many deliveries of fresh vegetables from her garden. It included some cucumbers and four beautiful zucchini.
Now I know there are lots and lots of delicious ways to use up zucchini, probably as many ways as you can find neighbors to share with you. There is just something about zucchini plants when they start producing - those green summer squashes can take over an entire garden.
Since I had four of them to use, I decided that I would use two in a sweet bread and two in something savory. There are so many wonderful recipes for zucchini breads and muffins, but my favorite happens to be with chocolate. - Let's be honest, I think a lot of us would include chocolate in our favorites.
Ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 cup applesauce
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups finely shredded zucchini (about 1 medium)
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Cooking spray
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°.
Wash, peel and grate your zucchini. The finer you are able to grate it, the less noticeable it will be in your bread.
Place first 3 ingredients in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at low speed until well blended.
Add flour mixture to sugar mixture, beating just until moist. Stir in the zucchini and chocolate chips.
Spoon batter into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out almost clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack, and remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.
I doubled this recipe and ended up with three good sized loaves. I probably could have cooked the bread about 10 minutes longer and the bread would have been a little bit cake-ier and less like a heavy bread. But we are enjoying it anyway. Half the loaf was gone before I could even stop the hungry eaters long enough to take a picture.
