Relle’s Recipes: Spicy Chocolate Zucchini Bread
When the summer squash come in, it’s always in abundance. If you don’t mind turning on your oven for an hour during the summer, this zucchini bread is well worth it! It’s got a little kick and a lot of chocolate. You can use either yellow or green summer squash. This recipe is enough for two loaves.
Ingredients:
3 or 4 zucchini shredded
½ cup butter melted (plus more for greasing pan)
3 ½ cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
¼-⅛ tsp cayenne (depends how spicy you like it!)
1 ¼ tsp baking powder
1 ¼ tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
¾ cup cocoa powder
4 eggs
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup sunflower oil (or any neutral oil)
10oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Grease an 8” loaf pan with softened butter and parchment paper.
Melt butter on the stove (make brown butter if you want more depth of flavor. For brown butter- cook melted butter over medium heat for 5-7 minutes until you see brown flecks and smell hazelnut. Remove from heat).
Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, cinnamon, cayenne, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cocoa powder).
Shred zucchini with a grater, squeeze out excess water with your hands.
Whip together wet ingredients (eggs, both sugars and sunflower oil).
Combine wet ingredients with zucchini, melted butter and chocolate chips (save a handful for the top).
Combine the wet ingredients/zucchini mixture into the dry ingredients with a spatula until there’s no more streaks of flour.
Bake at 350 for 1 hour, the top should spring back and the sides will pull away from the loaf pan. Allow to cool in the pan and remove using the parchment paper.
