Chocolate Zucchini Bread

This has been a very busy week for my kitchen. I have canned, baked, cooked and prepped just about every fruit and veggie that can be grown in our region. It has been a good year for gardens and my counter was literally overflowing with squash at the end of last week. It was a tad bit overwhelming, but I dove in and canned 15 pounds of squash and pickles and baked chocolate zucchini muffins. However, even after all this work I was still left with a number of zucchini. Never one to let food go to waste, I decided to make a loaf of zucchini bread, a family favorite. After searching through recipes online I came across a recipe for Chocolate Zucchini Bread from Allrecipes.com which looked delicious and easy to make.

This recipe has 13 ingredients. It takes an hour and 15 minutes to prep and cook and makes 20 servings. I made a number of modifications to this recipe. I am not a fan of using a cup of oil in baking, so I substituted the oil with unsweetened apple sauce. Growing up my mother was diabetic so I became used to substituting unsweetened applesauce in recipes from an early age. It is a great substitute for sugar and oil and keeps baked goods very moist. I left out the walnuts, I am not a walnut fan and my boys won't eat any baked goods with walnuts or pecans. Finally, instead of using two loaf pans I baked the bread in a bundt pan. I love using a bundt pan in sweet bread recipes, it makes a great shape and is easy to slice into servings. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

I was very pleased with how pretty this bread came out. I topped the servings with frozen berries and sprinkled the top with powdered sugar. Substituting the oil made for a moist bread that wasn't overly heavy. I used bittersweet chocolate for the chocolate chips, which was nice since it didn't make the bread overly sweet. This recipe is a great way to use zucchini and will be a recipe that I will use again next year when I am swimming in garden vegetables.

For the recipe Chocolate Zucchini Bread.

Here is a pic of the squash and pickles I was busy making. My boys love pickles and ate all 20 jars I canned last summer!