I've been baking for friends and colleagues throughout the pandemic, either delivering on foot to people who live nearby, or packaging baked goods for contactless pickup from our front porch. I bake purely for the joy of it and and I don't desire or expect anything in return. Still, I've received a wide variety of unsolicited gifts from people who have received baked goods, including honey, jam, maple syrup, olive oil, heirloom apples, homegrown herbs and produce, homemade salsa and Mexican food, a homemade bath bomb and soap, and even donations on my behalf to the Capital Area Food Bank. Perhaps the most unusual gesture of appreciation was from a former colleague who -- completely unprompted -- weeded the overgrown flower beds in front of our house that were badly in need of attention.
One of my colleagues who is a master gardener has often given me vegetables and beautiful flower bouquets from her garden. And when she offered me zucchini, I eagerly accepted because I love zucchini bread and I wanted to try Shauna Sever's "Double Chocolate Zucchini Loaf" recipe from Midwest Made. Shauna doesn't mince words when describing this bread. In the headnote, she says, "This is a recipe that smothers that neutral, nutritious squash with loads of chocolate, nearly making it disappear in the loaf, and uses it only for the wonderful moisture it imparts. There's plenty of supply for a more virtuous zucchini preparation tomorrow."
To make the batter, you whisk together sugar, melted butter, eggs, oil, and vanilla; add the sifted dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and baking soda); and fold in grated zucchini and chocolate chips. You scrape the batter into a parchment-lined loaf pan, scatter on more chocolate chips, and bake.
I used chocolate chunks in the batter but chocolate chips for sprinkling on top, because I thought the smaller, lighter chips would be more likely to not sink into the loaf while it baked. In fact, the chocolate chips on top of the loaf stayed put, so my finished loaf was covered in chips and looked just like the photo in the cookbook (the same photo you can see here). If you looked closely at a slice, you could make out tiny bits of green from the zucchini peel, but you couldn't taste the zucchini at all. This bread was 100% chocolate and it was so good. It was dense but moist, packed with chocolate flavor, and I loved the big chocolate chunks. This bread was positively decadent and absolutely fantastic. I'm definitely a fan of traditional zucchini bread and don't plan to stop making it -- but this variety is pretty hard to resist!
Recipe: "Double Chocolate Zucchini Loaf" from Midwest Made by Shauna Sever, recipe available here at WBEZ.org.
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