A healthy chocolate zucchini bread that is moist and dark, and free of dairy and oil. The soft dense bread is rich with cocoa powder, and yet as moist as devil's food cake, made with twice the amount of zucchini typically found in zucchini bread recipes.
¼cupdairy free milkI used canned coconut milk, warmed
Instructions
Prep
Add the lemon juice to the milk and allow it to sit for 10 minutes and curdle. This helps activate the baking soda to act as a leavener.
½ cup dairy free milk, 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a loaf pan and dust with cocoa powder, or line with parchment paper hanging over the sides.
Prepare zucchini. Wash with water and soap or vinegar, raw, unpeeled and whole zucchini. Then grate it. Rinse if it is out of season zucchini.* Press it into a strainer to squeeze out water. Then squeeze it several times between several pieces of paper towels to remove yet more water.Reduce the wet 2 cups of grated zucchini to 1 cup of grated zucchini with water squeezed out.
2 cups zucchini, grated
Make the Batter
Into a smaller mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients and stir with a whisk. Set aside.
2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour, ¼ cup (35g) cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon of salt
In a large bowl, stir up the wet ingredients and sugar and coffee.
¼ cup (61g) applesauce, unsweetened, ½ cup dairy free milk, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, ¼ cup (57g) butter, 2 teaspoon vanilla, ¾ cup (150g) coconut sugar, ½ teaspoon instant coffee, 1 tablespoon arrowroot
Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredient mixture. Mix batter with a hand mixer, spoon or stand mixer.
Fold in the zucchini, and add the batter to a loaf pan.
2 cups zucchini, grated
Bake
Bake for 50 minutes to possibly 60 minutes, but start checking at 45 minutes, and check every 5 or 10 minutes after that. Bake until a tester comes out clean.
Let cool 20 minutes before attempting to remove the loaf from the pan. I remove it by slipping a knife in the edges, and lifting the cake out via the parchment overhang.
Set the loaf on a cooling rack and allow it to completely cool, about 30 minutes.
Frost the top
To top it with a chocolate glaze, melt the chocolate and microwave the milk, and combine the two, then pour it over the top. Allow to set at room temperature. I also sprinkled cookie crumbs on mine.
½ cup chocolate chips, ¼ cup dairy free milk
Storage
To store this vegan chocolate zucchini bread, allow it to cool and then slice BEFORE frosting. Then wrap each slice individually in plastic wrap. Place them in a sealed container. Store at room temperature for up to 3 days. Or refrigerate for a week. Or freeze up to 3 months.
Video
Notes
1.Rinse the grated zucchini if you bought it out of season. The growing season for zucchini is summer through early fall. In season zucchini will be moist. Out of season needs to be rinsed after grating. Just add it to a strainer, and pour water through it. Then proceed to next step which is to squeeze zucchini's water out. 2.Be sure the butter is melted into a liquid. Microwave it for 10-30 seconds and allow it to cool.3.Be sure all ingredients are at room temperature, very important.4.Pour the batter into the loaf pan as soon as it's mixed. The reaction by the leaveners is very fast, so you need to get it baking before the power wears off and you end up with a flat loaf.5.Use Dutch processed or regular cocoa powder. Some chocolate zucchini loaf recipes require use of natural cocoa powder but I like the chocolate flavor and the dark devil's food color of Dutch-processed cocoa so I adjusted this recipe to allow it. Baking soda, the leavener in this bread, requires acid to help the bread rise. Natural cocoa is acidic and fulfills that role, while Dutch-processed cocoa, which is not acidic does not. But I added acid to the recipe via homemade buttermilk, the lemon juice in the milk. So your bread should rise just fine.There are a few substitution possibilities with this recipe.All purpose flour can be replaced with a gluten-free baking flour to make this recipe gluten free.Applesauce. Instead of applesauce to replace eggs, you can use two flaxseed eggs, which is 2 tablespoons of flaxseed, stirred into 6 tablespoons of water. You can also use yogurt, although high fat with no flavoring is best.Coconut sugar. This is a brown sugar and provides moisture and caramel flavor to the cake. You can use cane sugar but the result might be a dryer cake.Cinnamon & Coffee. Both of these ingredients are optional. The cinnamon adds a spicy kick, and the coffee deepens the flavor of chocolate, you don't taste in the cake.Dairy-free Milk + Lemon. You can use apple cider vinegar or white vinegar instead of lemon juice.