- Hey, I'm John Kanell
and today on Preppy Kitchen,
we're making an easy,
delicious chocolate zucchini bread.
So let's get started.
First off, set your oven to 350 fahrenheit
and we're gonna grease a nine by five inch loaf pan.
Just a little butter will do, this is not gonna stick.
But you know what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna use some parchment paper.
Whenever you make a loaf,
a little parchment paper does wonders.
Just place it right into your butter dish.
I can pull it out when it's done,
it'll be no fuss, no muss.
Now in a large bowl, I'm gonna get
all the dry ingredients together
starting with one and a half cups
of all purpose flour, that's 180 grams.
Perfect.
I'm also adding half a cup or 50 grams
of Dutch processed cocoa powder.
Dutch processed cocoa powder is gonna be darker
and it also gives you a fudgier baked good when you use it.
Cocoa powder is so light, it's crazy.
There we go, 50 grams.
Sugar is technically a wet ingredient
but we're adding it anyways,
200 grams or one cup.
three quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder.
One quarter teaspoon baking soda.
Half a teaspoon of salt.
If you're using table salt or a fine crystal salt,
I would use like a quarter plus a little pinch.
One teaspoon of cinnamon.
You could add so many spices to this.
If I was doing this another day,
I might add a little bit of cardamom,
like a quarter of a teaspoon,
and a quarter of a teaspoon of allspice.
I'm also adding in one teaspoon of espresso powder.
You could use instant coffee
or you could also add a little bit
of like really strong coffee into the wet ingredients
if you don't have the instant stuff.
This is not gonna make it like a mocha cake,
you are gonna be tasting more chocolate
because you added the coffee in.
It's a well known, not so secret baker secret.
Our scale is done, now we're gonna sift it out.
Cocoa powder has so many lumps
because of the fat content
so it's just a good idea to always sift any recipe
that has cocoa powder in it.
Look, do you see this?
That is pure rocks.
Work those through.
Give this a quick whisk.
Okay, and now we're onto the wet.
Actually before I get the wet ingredients together,
let me show you this.
These are zucchini from our garden.
I picked them today and we are having the best crop ever.
I'm so excited for all
the delicious zucchini things I can make.
In the recipe, I need one and a half cups
of shredded zucchini.
There's two things you could do,
you can shred it and pack it into a liquid measuring cup
or you can weigh it out.
I'm gonna measure it today,
it's the most accurate way,
and I know that all I have to do
is fill this bowl up until I get 220 grams.
Make sure you remove that little tip
where the flower used to be.
Now we're gonna shred this out.
And I have to tell you, so many recipes will say,
oh, about one or two zucchini or something like that,
that's not okay because you could have
a little, tiny baby zucchini or like massive ones.
These are actually the medium sized ones from the garden.
We have some mega zucchini.
When you add zucchini into any bread or cake
it's gonna make it super moist.
It's just like adding pumpkin.
You're not gonna taste the zucchini,
you'll just taste the chocolate,
and yes, this is an excellent way
to trick people into eating zucchini
if they claim they don't like it.
Before I had this kitchen garden,
at the grocery store I went to,
they charged you for individual zucchini
which is crazy because some of them
were like little, tiny baby pickles
and the other ones were like this big.
So of course everyone's gonna choose
the large zucchini cause they cost the same.
Okay.
Ooh.
That's nice.
All right, let's see how much we have.
That's more than enough.
Just gonna take away a little bit.
Perfect.
So I have a little bit of extra zucchini.
I can pop it into my omelet in the morning or something,
but I want to tell you that if you overload your bread
with too much, it's gonna have a lot of water in it
and you'll end up with like a soggy dough.
It just won't have that melt in your mouth consistency.
It could end up kind of gummy.
It could just be wet.
It's gonna be sad.
So use the proper amount.
In a medium bowl, I'm adding half a cup of oil,
veggie oil, but you could really use any oil that you like.
Avocado, olive oil, anything's gonna work here
as long as it's mild in flavor.
I'm also adding in one quarter cup of unsalted butter.
I'm gonna pop this into the microwave,
it's gonna be all nice and melty
and the oil will keep this cake moist no matter what,
it could be in the fridge for a couple days,
you bring it out, it'll be soft as you please,
but the butter tastes delicious
so you have the best of both worlds here.
Now I'm adding two teaspoons of vanilla
because it's delicious.
This is optional though.
If you don't want to use it,
the cake's gonna be, I'm sorry,
that bread is gonna be delicious anyways.
It's not cake, it's bread.
It's time for three large room temperature eggs.
One.
Normally I would crack these into a separate bowl
to look for eggshells but because this is clear,
I can totally fish them out.
Whisk together your delicious concoction
of butter, oil, eggs, and vanilla.
One of the reasons I like warming the oil
and the butter up together is that you get a warm bowl.
The butter is less likely to explode in the microwave
and your batter is gonna be slightly warm
which means it'll bake up really nice.
Whenever you bake a cold batter in the oven
it's just not happy.
The center takes so much longer to bake
that the outside could be overdone
by the time the center is done.
Your zucchini bread is gonna be good for up to four days,
just wrap it up nice and tight
or you could slice it up and freeze those slices.
Delicious.
Everything's ready to combine
so we're gonna add our butter mixture in right now.
It's so pretty.
My shredded zucchini goes in as well.
And for a good measure, I'm also adding in
one cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
You could use any chocolate you like, really.
And I'm saving just a couple for the top.
Fold this together until it's just combined.
If you over-mix, you could have a denser, gummy cake
and that's not delicious.
Just fold.
All I wanna see is the flour disappear
then I know I'm ready.
Okay.
I'm ready to pour my batter into the prepared loaf pan.
Add that in.
Get all that delicious batter right into the pan.
It basically looks like fudge right now.
Top this with your reserved chocolate chips
and this is ready to go into the oven for 60 to 70 minutes
or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Let your cake cool a bit, give it a slice,
and it's ready to enjoy.
That is so full of chocolate flavor
and it just melts in your mouth.
The zucchini gave it a ton of moisture
but you don't taste the zucchini,
it just made it a magically soft cake, bread.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video, check out my chocolate playlist.