Zucchini bread was always a favorite of my grandmother’s to make. When she passed, I think we found over fifty different zucchini bread recipes from recipe books and newspaper clippings that she had put in her baking files. As an homage to my darling grandma, and to try and help you guys get your daily serving of vegetables, I took to zucchini bread. If we are being honest, this is more of a chocolate cake with a bit of zucchini. But hey, at least we’re trying to be more nutritious, right?! So while you sip your coffee in the morning and take a bite of this rich and delicious chocolate zucchini bread, you can feel satisfied knowing that you’re also getting a healthy dosage of vitamin A, manganese, and fiber!
Oh to be little shreds of zucchini suspended in a fluffy chocolate bread…
For chocolate zucchini bread, you want about 2 cups worth of zucchini. And you want to make sure you have cheese cloth or something of the like. Cheese cloth makes it so easy to squeeze all of the extra moisture out of your zucchini so your cake does not come out flat. Squeezing out the moisture helps to control water content in your batter so it is neither too runny nor too thick. It leaves you with the perfect amount of zucchini pieces suspended in your batter.
The main reason I am making this recipe is because my boyfriend’s mom gave me a ridiculous zucchini. Her brother grew it, and it was a monster the size of a small baby. If you are curious, check out the image below. I posted about it on my Instagram story and got an overwhelming response asking for a zucchini bread recipe. So I knew I had to deliver. And deliver I did. This recipe took me all of one day to create, which I did not expect. I was nervous about the ratios to get a nice rise and a moist crumb, but honestly, it’s perfect. It’s chocolaty, it’s moist, it’s rich, it’s delicious. If you have an abnormally large zucchini (or just two normal sized ones) you’re going to want to use them for this. So go out to your garden or your farmers market, grab some veggies, and get to baking!
Chocolate Zucchini Bread
Equipment
- Cheese Cloth
- Large and medium sized bowl
- Saucepan or microwave (for melting butter)
- Whisk
- Rubber Spatula
- Loaf Pan
Ingredients
- 2 Zucchini (we need 2 cups of grated zucchini)
- ⅓ cup Butter
- 1 cup All-Purpose Flour
- ½ cup Dutch Process Cocoa
- ½ tsp Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- ¾ teaspoon Kosher Salt
- ⅔ cup Dark Brown Sugar
- ¼ cup Granulated Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- ½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- ⅓ cup Buttermilk (whole milk can also work)
- ½ cup Dark Chocolate Chips (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F and grease and line your loaf pan with parchment paper.
- In a medium sized bowl, grate zucchini until you have 2 packed cups worth. Transfer the zucchini to a cheese cloth and squeeze the moisture out of it until almost no juice comes out when you squeeze. Set the squeezed and de-juiced zucchini aside.
- In a saucepan or in the microwave, melt your butter. Set aside to cool.
- In a large bowl add your flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to combine.
- In a clean medium-sized bowl, add the sugars and the melted butter, whisk to combine completely.
- Add the eggs, vanilla, and buttermilk and whisk together until you have a homogeneous liquid mass.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk until everything is just combined and there are only a couple streaks of flour left.
- Add your zucchini and fold it into the batter using the rubber spatula. Make sure it gets evenly distributed.
- Pour your batter into your prepared loaf pan and top with chocolate chips if desired.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Allow to cool before cutting and enjoy!
Follow me on Instagram @BAKINGWITHLEMON and hashtag your posts #BAKINGWITHLEMON if you make one of my recipes! I adore seeing you guys get creative with baking!
