Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread with Pistachios

Right about now you're looking around your vegetable garden and thinking,  "What will I do with all this zucchini?" And don't get me started on that huge one hiding under the leaves! Oddly, National Zucchini Bread Day falls on April 25. That doesn't really make any sense. Oh yes, you can buy zucchini all year round, but it's a summer crop. So, by mid-summer  if you're growing zucchini (even one plant!), you've probably run out of friends to hand zukes off to, and you're thinking of wrapping them up in a blanket, putting them a basket and leaving them on the church steps.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread to the rescue. O.K., to be fair, Zucchini Bread doesn't use up a lot of zucchini, but it's a tasty way of serving up your courgettes! Add chocolate and you're calling my name!

When I first started baking 'vegetable' breads, I used old coffee tins for baking pans, but that was a long time ago. Now, I usually make my zucchini breads in bundt pans, and I'm always amazed by the new bundt pan shapes. Yesterday I saw the cutest car bundt pans at Williams Sonoma, and I love my Train Bundt Pan!  Of course conventional loaf pans work, too, since this is a bread. Most recipes say to let the zucchini bread cool before serving. I don't follow that advice since by the time the aroma has filled my kitchen for an hour, I'm ready to devour the Chocolate Zucchini Bread and often do! Since you, too, might make short shrift of this chocolate zucchini bread, you'll want to make two or double the recipe, so others get a chance to taste.

A few comments on zucchini. Depending on where you live, zucchini is also called courgettes or marrows (remember Hercule Poirot throwing the marrow over the fence in the opening of The Murder of Roger Acroyd?) and sometimes summer squash (although in my neck of the woods summer squash is a totally different squash and a different color).

Here are two of my favorite recipes for Chocolate Zucchini Bread: Geeky Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread and  Chcocolate Chunk Zucchini Bread, but I have a third! As you know, you can never have too many recipes for Chocolate to enjoy! This Chocolate Zucchini Bread tastes great toasted with a little cream cheese or mascarpone! And, the secret ingredient: Pistachios!

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI BREAD with Pistachios!

Ingredients
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp Madagascar Vanilla
2 Tbsp sweet butter
6 Tbsp DARK Cocoa
2 cups zucchini, grated
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
dash of salt
1-1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2/3 cup chopped chocolate chunks or dark chocolate chips
3/4 cup coarsely chopped pistachios
2 tsp. flour

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°.
In large bowl, combine eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla. Mix until well blended.
In small saucepan, melt 2 Tbsp butter, add 6 Tbsp cocoa and blend tuntil smooth. Set aside to cool.
Peel and grate zucchini. Add zucchini and cooled cocoa mixture to the large mixing bowl and blend well.
In separate bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add dry ingredients to the batter. Stir only enough to blend in all the dry ingredients.
In another bowl, coat broken up chocolate chunks (or chips) with 2 tsp. flour.
Fold in flour-coated chocolate chunks and chopped pistachios to the batter.
Spoon batter into two greased and floured 9x5x3 loaf pans or into a greased bundt pan.
Bake 60-70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.
Cool in  pans for 5-10 minutes.
Remove from pans and continue to cool on a wire rack.