Food Friday: Chocolate Zucchini Bread

My absolute favorite dessert that my Mum always makes when I’m home is chocolate zucchini bread. I decided to try making it myself by following Mum’s recipe with a few adjustments and it turned out great!

In Slovakia, we do not have the luxury of chocolate chips so I chopped up a chocolate bar instead. This substitution worked out for the better as the chunks added decadence and made for a nice artisan shot for the cover photo of this blog.

Lastly, since vanilla extract, at least the kind that doesn’t taste artificial, is hard to come by in Slovakia, I excluded it from the recipe. The bread still tasted good but to all my North American friends, you should definitely add the vanilla extract if you have the good stuff – it would be un-American to exclude it!

Ingredients:

2 oz unsweetened/dark chocolate
3 eggs
2 cups white sugar
2 cups finely grated zucchini
1 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped up chocolate of your choice (I like a mixture of dark and milk)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9×5 inch loaf pans with cooking spray if you have it. Melt the chocolate until smooth. I do not have a microwave so I melted it in a bowl over boiling water, which is actually super easy and a fool-proof way of melting chocolate. I used simple dark chocolate but you can also use baker’s chocolate-the taste is quite similar.
In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, grated zucchini, vanilla and chocolate; beat well. Make sure you squeeze the grated zucchini over a sink before adding it to mixture so you don’t have too much extra moisture. Finely grating the zucchini ensures it won’t sink to the bottom while baking.
Stir in the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Fold in the chocolate chunks (the most important part). Pour batter into prepared loaf pans.
Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a loaf comes out clean.
Let the bread cool in the pans slightly and then transfer them to a cooling rack. If you’re hopeless like me at fishing the bread out in one piece, no worries. Chocolate zucchini bread is very forgiving and tastes great even if it looks like a mess.

This bread is delicious warm and frozen so gobble it up all in one go or freeze it and enjoy it gradually. For an indulgent breakfast, enjoy a slice or three with a cup of freshly squeezed orange/grapefruit juice (I like to combine them). Nothing says good morning like chocolatey indulgence paired with fresh Vitamin C.

Bon Appetite!

Anna