Chocolate Zucchini Bread

inspired by The Kitchn

Ingredients

• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• cooking spray or the buttery wrapper of the above butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar (or less!)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 cups coarsely grated zucchini (From 1 large zucchini, or two small-ish ones, or maybe a medium and a small? Clearly this is variable)
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Coat an 8x5-inch loaf pan with cooking spray or rub it with the buttered wrapper.
2. Preheat the oven to 350F.
3. Use a mixer to cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (I guess you could do this by hand but I do not have the upper body strength for that). This will probably take a few minutes.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time until completely combined.
5. Stir in the cocoa powder, vanilla extract, salt, and baking powder.
6. Fold in the grated zucchini.
7. Add the flour and chocolate chips to the bowl, stirring until just combined.
8. Transfer to the loaf pan and spread into an even layer.
9. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean (although there might be some melted chocolate on it from the chocolate chips - use your judgment here to tell the difference), 50 to 60 minutes.
10. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Flip out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Thoughts

This is one of my favorite ways to use up zucchini. It’s like a brownie but in loaf form. This last time, it was rather crumbly. Not sure what’s up with that, but it was good (and always is) so I’m not too worried. Often zucchini recipes have you salt it and/or squeeze the moisture out - not this one. The zucchini makes this super moist (and sort of healthy? because it’s green? idk) so don’t let any of that moisture out!

• ← Zucchini Pasta
• Raspberry Ice Cream →