Birthday Bread

Shredded zucchini--a raw ingredient that can be turned into so many different, delicious things.

Kyle is 23 today. Aside from the usual musing about our mortality and, to borrow from Sylvia Plath, the awful rowing toward God that we all have in common, I would like to focus on something a little lighter and sweeter–something more along the lines of chocolate zucchini bread. Kyle hates for anyone to make a fuss about his birthday (this post will probably irk him a little, too), so I thought a bread would be better than a cake. I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store, either, so that limited my options considerably as well. Once I remembered the lovely zucchinis we purchased a few days ago and thought about how much he loves my blueberry zucchini bread (more about that delicious thing later), I’d pretty much made up my mind about what I was going to bake. I have read countless recipes combining chocolate and zucchini, but my blueberry bread is so wonderful that I’ve never branched out. Woah baby, am I glad I did! I used a slighlty adapted version of this Chocolate Zucchini Bread recipe from The Joy of Baking:

So good we ended up eating a few pieces before I could let my camera charge up enough to take a picture.

1 1/2 cup shredded zucchini (I used one large zucchini and that was plenty)
1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I think I used sunflower or canola, but anything but olive should do)
1/2 cup organic cane sugar
1/2 cup (105 grams) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

The recipe also called for 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice, which I omitted because I don’t have any, as well as 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, for which I was going to substitute a chopped up Ghiardelli chocolate bar I had been saving for something special but realized halfway through the baking process that Kyle has already eaten it.

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• Pumpkin Bread
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