Zucchini and chocolate? You bet!
recipe #37: zucchini chocolate bread

It's sometimes said that zucchini must be planted two at a time so that they could pollinate each other, or else there would be very few fruits. When we first planted zucchinis, we only planted one at a time. Contrary to our expections, there were still a lot of zucchinis.

However, no matter how many there were, the birds would eat them, down to the blossoms and the tiny fruit. Those that survived would fall prey to slugs and snails. Out of the remainings, the squirrels would steal them. We would be lucky if we could harvest even two zucchinis.

On the third year, my mother planted six plants, and there should have been plenty left over. However, it still wasn't enough for them! She bought some netting to protect them, and this time, there were so many zucchinis that we started giving them away to neighbors, friends, relatives and even the postman! She even thought about giving them to strangers!

My mother has made many zucchini dishes, breads and desserts (yes, even desserts).

Ingredients

1. 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, molten
2. 3 eggs
3. 2 c. sugar
4. 1 c. oil
5. 2 c. grated zucchini
6. 2 c. all-purpose flour
7. 1 tsp. baking soda
8. 1 tsp. baking powder
9. 1/2 tsp. salt
10. 2 tsp. vanilla extract
11. 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, ground (optional)
12. 1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips or 3/4 c. walnuts

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). Lightly grease a large loaf pan.
2. Mix flour, cinnamon (nutmeg), salt, baking soda and baking powder well.
3. In a large bowl, beat eggs, and combine oil, sugar, vanilla extract, grated zucchini and molten chocolate; mix well.
4. Fold in flour mixture, and then walnuts (or chocolate chips)
5. Pour batter into prepared loaf pans.
6. Bake in preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a loaf comes out clean.

Tips

1. Chocolate chips can be melted in bowl over water-filled frying pan on low-medium heat, in which case you must stir until smooth. Alternatively, you can microwave the chocolate at 50% for about two minutes.
2. You can shape the bread into that of desserts, such as cupcakes.
3. You can substitute the sugar with brown sugar. If you use regular chocolate chips, you can reduce the sugar to 1 to 1 1/2 cups. Basically, we use very little ourselves.