An Eggless, Slightly Healthier Chocolate Zucchini Bread

There are many fruits, vegetables and foods whose existence I discovered only after I started blogging and following other food blogs, as they were not available in India. In the past 5 or 6 years, many of these have started losing their mysteriousness as they have become regulars on the store shelves or at the market. Some of these fruits and vegetables are now grown in India, or else are imported from countries all over the world. So it is perfectly normal to find kiwi fruit from New Zealand, apples from the U.S., pears from China and guavas from India sharing the same shelf space.

The zucchini/ courgette was one of such vegetables that I "discovered" a couple of years ago. And it occasionally puts in an appearance at the market here too, though with a ridiculously up market price tag to it!
Every time I have done a net search for ways of cooking this, zucchini bread was one of the more popular results that always came up. The only problem (for me) was that most of the recipes seemed to call for about 4 to 5 eggs and a lot of oil. The eggless recipes all seemed to use egg alternatives or vegan alternatives which are unheard of/ or not available here.




So I put together an eggless chocolate zucchini bread recipe by adding grated apple and yogurt. I also cut down on the fat a bit by reducing the oil used and using cocoa instead of chocolate. I am not sure if this bread is meant to be a bit heavy, but my loaf rose well but was a bit dense and tasted more like cake to me than bread. But I guess because of the method of putting together the batter is more like that of a quick bread than cake batter, this is definitely bread.

My husband liked it, though our daughter didn't find it to her taste. I thought it came out pretty well and tasted good. I liked it better the next day, after it had been in the fridge. I think this bread is a pretty nice way to use up zucchini!!
Here is my recipe, which I arrived at by adapting various other recipes with some inspired additions of my own.



Ingredients:


1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

1/4 tsp grated nutmeg

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup packed, grated zucchini

1/2 cup grated apple

1/3 cup thick plain yogurt

1 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract



Method:


Put the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl and mix well.

In a separate bowl, whisk the oil, yogurt, sugar and vanilla extract together. Pour this into the dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon, mix everything together very well. Now add the grated zucchini, apple and walnuts and fold this in till well blended.

Scrape this thick batter into a well greased and floured loaf tin and bake at 180C for about 1 1/2 hours, till a skewer inserted in the loaf comes out clean.

Cool the bread in the pan for about 20 minutes and then loosen and cool on a rack. Slice only when completely cool. If not serving immediately, refrigerate.

This recipe makes one loaf.