Chocolate and Zucchini Loaf
Adding Fresh Courgettes for Easy to Make Chocolate Cake Recipe
Aug 12, 2008
Dark Chocolate - including Green & Black’s 70% or 85% cocoa solids – will bring luxe to an everyday vegetable loaf using the summer season’s zucchini or courgettes. Inspired by organic gardening, adding grated fresh zucchini will bring texture, moisture and a refreshing green taste in a loaf that will keep for up to three days.
Chocolate and Zucchini Loaf
Ingredients:
Measurement of ingredients below is for baking the Chocolate and Zucchini Loaf in a rectangular loaf tin (9 inches by 4 inches).
- 2-3 zucchini / courgette to make 2 ½ cups full when grated
- 175g dark chocolate, at least 60% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
- 1/3 olive oil
- 1/2 cup caster sugar (granulated sugar can be used instead)
- 2 large free range eggs
- 4 drops vanilla essence (or 2 teaspoons of vanilla)
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ½ cups wholemeal flour
Directions:
- Grease the loaf tin with butter or margarine then flour in as preparation for baking.
- Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius before making the chocolate and zucchini loaf mix.
- Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl suspended over boiled water gently simmering in a saucepan.
- Stir the melting chocolate until it runs smooth then keep warm for the few minutes of making the zucchini loaf mix.
- Lightly beat the two eggs in another bowl.
- Add the olive oil, sugar, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder to a bowl and turn over with a spoon.
- Add the drops of vanilla essence and turn over again.
- Beat the loaf mix hard until blended together.
- Add the wholemeal flour and fold in until mixture is consistently moist
- Grate the zucchini on a chopping board or plate. As long as the zucchini is fresh (the vegetables is hard to bend), then imperfections on the zucchini skin will not taint the loaf so do include in the mix.
- Add the piles of grated zucchini and the juices to the loaf mix and stir the loaf mix ensuring the zucchini is well covered.
- Stir in the melted chocolate as the final ingredient to the loaf mix.
- Pour immediately the loaf mix into the prepared loaf tin. The top of the loaf can be left as it falls for uneven top or a wet knife can be drawn across the top for a smoother finish.
- Bake in the over for 60 to 75 minutes or until the loaf tests done with a tapping test. Tap the bread top and it should sound hollow.
- When cooked, the chocolate and zucchini loaf will have a medium browned top. Turn out the loaf from the tin and leave it to cool on a wire rack.
- Slice up to serve when warm or cooled to room temperature. Alternatively, the loaf can be chilled, before slicing.
About the Chocolate and Zucchini Loaf Recipe
This recipe is a variation of Zucchini Loaf and was devised using Green and Black’s Dark 70% Chocolate.
A recipe for Chocolate Courgette Loaf was published in Unwrapped Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes: From the Cacao Pod to Muffins, Mousses and Moles (Kyle Cathie Ltd, 2006) written and compiled by Caroline Jeremy. Lindsey Barrow created the Chocolate Courgette Loaf in Unwrapped for a Country Living recipe competition – “she devised this recipe ‘after being inundated with courgettes from her organic garden’. Lindsey often bakes this loaf for charity cake sales and, because of the unusual combination of ingredients, it always sells out”.
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