Going on a cooking or baking frenzy is fun, sometimes challenging and tiring. I love trying new recipes (and if you didn’t feel the same, you probably would not be reading my blog), so when I needed to bring goodies for a women’s meeting, I went through the hundreds of to-try recipes I have in my “internet” cookbook arsenal. This is one, and coming up in the next week will be 2 others.
What I wanted were some varied baked things – not just cookies, or bars. Three other women were on my committee and they brought fruit, cold drinks and peanut butter & jelly treats (on bagels). Sometimes the hostess serves coffeecake, since the meeting is in the morning, but I’ve noticed that rarely do people take any of it. I thought finger food would be the best. First up is this easy zucchini bread, a sweet bread that used about 2 zucchini.
The recipe is simple enough, one devised by Peabody, over at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. Way back in 2008. But who’s counting any of the recipes we set aside to make . . . some day?
You may recall that a few years ago I went through my ancient files – recipes dating from about 1962 to 1995. Within each of those folders were ones I’d made and ones to try (mixing them in the same folder was a bad idea), just divided into categories like salad, beef, veggies, etc. Once I retired in 1995 I started entering all of my favorite recipes into MasterCook and then throwing away the clippings. That took nearly a year, pulling some from those clippings, and many others from cookbooks with flags on the pages. But there were still hundreds – gee, maybe a thousand or more – clippings in the pocket folders. A few years ago I started systematically going through those folders again, tossing some and re-sorting them into sub-categories and returning them to the Pentaflex hangars. As time has gone on, I rarely even refer to those recipes anymore – maybe only every 3 months or so. That tells me I should get rid of them, Period. But gosh, is that ever hard! Don’t know if I can do it. To do so, I’ll have to go through them yet again. Sigh . . . so many recipes, never enough time. I seem to veer toward new recipes, either ones I find on the internet or in the hundreds of cookbooks I own. I could cook for 10 years with nothing but 4-5 of my newer cookbooks. Well, I will think about all that another day . . .
Back to this chocolate zucchini bread. Divine. Oh, I think that’s a no-no word in foodie culture. Bloggers use way too many superlative adverbs – yummy, luscious, delicious, fantastic, greatest, and we’re supposed to nearly forget about using an exclamation point. Oh dear. I’m guilty. Garrett McCord (from Vanilla Garlic) wrote up a post recently about not using the following words: nice, good, bad, great, unctuous (which he says has a totally different meaning than food writers [me included] may use it for) and better than sex. I don’t think I’ve ever used that last phrase, but undoubtedly I’ve used all of the others. But McCord cautions bloggers to clarify – if it’s nice, explain exactly what makes it nice. Or if it’s good, exactly how or why it’s good. I think I do that ever since I added the little blurbs at the bottom of my posts – the what’s good and what’s not. I’ve had a few of my friends tell me that they bypass all the paragraphs I write and simply go to the what’s good and what’s not to decide if they’re going read the recipe and/or print/save it. Or not.
What’s different about this bread is the addition of mascarpone cheese in the mixture. It also is a buttermilk based batter – I always like using buttermilk since it makes cakes and breads so very tender. This one included. My only difficulty was getting the very center cooked through. I used a different sized pan, so I expected the timing to be different than the stated recipe, but after researching all over the ‘net I’ve concluded that moist short (non-yeast) breads like banana bread and I’ll include this bread in the same category since it’s moist from the zucchini, should be baked to an internal temp of about 200°. Some recipes say 190° or even as high as 210° – and I baked mine to 190°, but only after the bread cooled and I cut into the very center, did I discovered that it wasn’t quite cooked, right down the center, inside that crack in the ridge and down about 1/2 inch or so.
The age-old test of whether a cake/bread is done, using the toothpick test, still seems to be a good one, though, if you don’t have an instant read thermometer.
What’s GOOD: loved this stuff. It has the heft of a bread, but it’s very tender (thin slices are not possible with this). It’s not a cake, though – maybe it’s something in between. The chocolate flavor is just right. And if you shred the zucchini finely (mine were a bit on the more-medium sized) you’ll not even see it. It freezes well. A real winner of a recipe, thanks to Peabody.
What’s NOT: nothing, whatsoever. Very worth making.
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Chocolate Zucchini Bread
Recipe By: Culinary Concoctions by Peabody (blog)
Serving Size: 16
3/4 cup unsalted butter — at room temperature
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate — chopped
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups zucchini — shredded unpeeled
3 large eggs
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1. Heat oven to 350°.
2. Melt together butter and chocolate over medium heat in a double boiler.When melted remove from heat. Mix in mascarpone cheese until it melts in with the chocolate mixture. (I placed my metal Kitchen Aid bowl on top of a simmering pot of water and just melted the mixture right in the bowl; then the bowl went directly into my stand mixer without dirtying another pot.)
3. Place mixture into a bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Mix in sugars, zucchini, eggs and vanilla on low speed until well combined.
4. In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.Add half of the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl. Then add the buttermilk. Then add the remaining dry ingredients.
5. Spoon batter into 2 greased and floured 8×4-inch loaf pans. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes(about 20-25 minutes for mini loaves) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. If you use an instant read thermometer, bake until the very center (toward the top) is 200°. The last part of this bread to finish baking is that center portion, inside the ridge crack. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack. Remove from pans and continue to cool on wire rack.
Per Serving: 265 Calories; 15g Fat (48.1% calories from fat); 4g Protein; 32g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 66mg Cholesterol; 111mg Sodium.
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