Recipe please?? That looks wonderful.

That does look good, but I never have that many zucchini.

I have chocolate zucchini cakes in the oven as we speak -- no chocolate chips and no coffee either but fresh zucchini!

Lars, when I have zucchini that "hides" and I don't find it until it's too big to make a nice vegetable dish, then I make zucchini candy, zucchini pickles or relish or zucchini bread or muffins. I only have zucchini that big, though, for about a month or two in the summer, the rest of the time it's just too expensive to buy enough zucchini to make bread! This recipe takes 4 cups grated, and makes two loaves.

Seagrass, I knew I'd like the addition of mocha, as well as the almond extract in this recipe, but I didn't read the recipe carefully, melted the butter and just stirred everything together in the bowl. It worked for me, sometimes I just get lucky! You can use a mixer, with that shoulder. I do hope you are feeling better...

Mocha Zucchini Bread

• 4 cups grated zucchini (from about a pound and a half of zucchini)
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (use natural unsweetened cocoa, NOT Dutch processed)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter (12 Tbsp or 1 1/2 sticks), melted
• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 Drain excess moisture from grated zucchini: Place the freshly grated zucchini in a sieve over a bowl to catch any excess moisture as it drains, while you work on prepping the other ingredients and preparing the recipe.

2 Preheat oven, prepare loaf pans: Preheat oven to 350°F, with a rack in the middle. Grease two 9x5-inch loaf pans with baking spray or butter.

3 Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, cinnamon: Vigorously whisk together the flour, unsweetened cocoa, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Whisk until there are no more clumps and the ingredients are well combined.

4 Beat sugar and eggs, add melted butter, instant coffee granules, almond extract: In a separate large bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs until smooth, about a minute. You can do this with an electric mixer on medium speed, or by hand with a wooden spoon. (I'm lazy and use a mixer but it's easy enough to do by hand.)Add the melted butter, instant coffee granules, and almond extract and beat until smooth.

5 Stir zucchini into sugar egg mixture, add flour mixture: Mix the shredded zucchini into the sugar egg mixture. Add the flour to the zucchini mixture in 3 additions, stirring to combine after each addition.

6 Divide batter into pans and bake: Work quickly, and divide the batter between the two prepared loaf pans. (Work quickly because once the dry ingredients have mixed with the wet ingredients, the leavening has begun.)

Place into the oven. Bake for 50 minutes at 350°F, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean and easily.

7 Cool: Remove to a rack. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then run a blunt knife around the edges to separate the bread from the pan. Remove from the loaf pans and let cool completely on a rack.

Note that if you try to slice the chocolate zucchini bread before it has completely cooled, it will be rather crumbly. It's also easiest to slice with a bread knife.

Martha, my next loaf is orange chocolate chip zucchini bread!

Annie

Annie -- that is a lot of zucchini! Most of my recipes are 2 cups! The cake was 1 cup. When I frost it, I'll share it but on it's own thread. Here for a long time the farmers thought you had to grow BIG zucchini! Was so glad when they realized that the littlier the better.

I make a chocolate zucchini cake when someone generously offers me a large zucchini. It's shredded zucchini in a homemade chocolate cake. It's so good plain, no icing, with ice cream.

Just last weekend I saw Nick Stellino (chef) make a pasta with cubed zucchini pasta sauce. It looked so good and hubby and I both want it. I threw out a request on Freecycle, but no one has any I guess, I'll just buy a couple of small zucchini at the market sometime soon.

Martha, most of my recipes take 2 cups of zucchini too, but they only make a single loaf. This makes two loaves, so it's more like a "double batch" of my regular zucchini bread recipe.

Jasdip, I get a huge charge out of Nick Stellino, and I think I saw that same recipe! I do try to pick the zucchini when they are smaller, but with all the garden produce available, sometimes it just gets away from me...

Annie

Annie - thanks for the recipe. I'll put DH to work on it! We can freeze it for several rounds of house guests. I've convinced him to harvest the summer squash and zucchini when they're just 8".

Apparently, size does matter when it comes to zucchini.

AnnieB., I'm still battling an army of those green little rebels. I recently baked lemon/zucchini muffins. Then, zucchini soup, zucchini pancakes and zucchini carbonara.

Strange, but I can't figure out why I'm suddenly craving chocolate zucchini bread.

Sol

"Lars, when I have zucchini that "hides" and I don't find it until it's too big to make a nice vegetable dish, then I make zucchini candy, zucchini pickles or relish or zucchini bread or muffins."

Wait! What? Zucchini candy? Recipe?

Riverrat, is that you? Man, I've missed you! It might be zucchini, but it's sure not health food, it's definitely candy! (grin) You'll need a dehydrator, and it comes out like gummy worms. I've never tried to make it in the oven because it just takes so many hours. The kids get a big charge out of it, getting all their friends to sample it and guess what it's made of. They never guess, of course, and then the grandkids spring it on them that they're eating zucchini, LOL. This batch was cherry-limeade flavor, the dark cherry seems to be the favorite so far.

The recipe comes from Linda Lou at Harvest, she doesn't post there any more, but she gave me this recipe years ago:

Zucchini Candy

10 cups peeled diced zucchini 1/2 inch cubes

( I use "worms" about 3 inches long and 1/12 inch thick and wide. The little dice would be good in muffins, though.

3 cups water

2 pkgs. unsweetened Koolaid

2 1/2 cups sugar

Peel zucchini, dice, removing seeds. Mix the liquid syrup together.

Add zucchini. Bring to a boil and them simmer for 25 min. Drain.

Put on dehydrator trays. Dry 14 hours at 125 degrees. Turn pieces

over and dry another 4 hours. This will feel dry and not sticky

when done. Store in jars or other tightly sealed containers.

If you dip in sugar when you turn them, they will be more like

"gum drops" on the outside.

I've made lots of flavors, I'll see if I can pull myself away from canning tomatoes long enough to get a picture of the different kinds, so you can see what a nice colorful mix there is. I've found that grape koolaid makes almost black gummies, and that lime is the least favorite so far, although I like it.

Sol, the coffee and chocolate hides the zucchini, if that helps! I do have a tomato and zucchini gratin recipe that I like a lot, and I love your zucchini pancakes, so I'm using them up, a few at a time.

Annie

Annie, Yep, It's me the ol riverrat1. I'm peeking on over here to see how my friends are doing! I do miss you all.

Thank you for posting the recipe. It should be a fun "project" to do with the kids. LOL! Your picture looks like carrots so, I can pretend to be eating something healthy... In my mind at least. ;-)