Cakes and Vegetables 3: Revenge of the Zucchinis

A year ago, my long-time fascination with vegetables and fruits directly incorporated into bread culminated in making my first banana bread.  Then last month, I spent an hour grating three cups worth of carrots to be baked into carrot cake.  Grating the carrots was so time-consuming, I swore to myself I would not grate vegetables for any baked goods in the near future.

Fast forward a month, and it looks like I am at it again.  At a friend's recommendation, I tried making chocolate zucchini bread.  To be more exact, it was a double chocolate spiced zucchini bread.  Honestly, I had my reservations because I am somewhat "choosy" when it comes to chocolate.  I typically like chocolate in only three forms: bars, candies, and melted (e.g. fudge on a sundae or chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven).  So you can probably imagine that I am not partial to certain American classics like chocolate ice cream or chocolate cake or chocolate milk (the first two I will tolerate, the last one I avoid at all costs).

But man oh man, this bread blew my reservations out the door (even if it does not look extremely appetizing). It was moist with firm texture, and also pleasing to bite.  The chocolate incorporated into the bread was actually a welcome addition taste-wise, possibly because the flavor was more conservative than expected.  I was worried that the extra chocolate chips would be overpowering, but instead they added gooey splotches to parts of the bread, making it that much more pleasing to chew. Since I had mint dark chocolate chips to get rid of, I used those for this bread. I am never a fan of mint chocolate (bought it for an experiment a while back), but I must say it worked out.

When I brought some slices into the office, one coworker with a particularly good intuition for food suggested I try a fruity parsnip bread, i.e. apple ginger parsnip bread or peach ginger parsnip bread.  Parsnips seem a little weird to me, but I am told they are basically a white carrot.  Given my borderline obsession with vegetables in bread, it looks like the path leading to my next baked creation has been laid out before me.

I adapted my chocolate zucchini bread from this recipe at Allrecipes.com.