Wake up, you sleepy-head! Rub your eyes! Get out of bed! Wake up; the Wicked Witch is BREAD!
That’s right. This week on Literary Cooking Adventures, we’re celebrating L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by making some utterly impressive chocolate chunk zucchini bread! Yes, it is as beautiful and delicious as it sounds.
In this episode, I battle a rather bendy zucchini, a mandolin, converse with the furry cat munchkins, and straight up kill the Wicked Witch of the East. Boom. Dropped a couch on you, witch. Didn’t see that coming, did ya?!
I found the original recipe through Simple Bites. The recipe there is a little more in depth with making the bread whole wheat and using freshly ground spices. I cut corners where I felt I could and the zucchini bread still came out well and tasted amazing.
Interested in making this wonderful, magical zucchini bread for yourself? Follow the yellow brick road down to the instructions below.
Ingredients
Dry
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups cake flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Wet
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup yogurt (calls for plain in the recipe but I used vanilla and it was fine)
1/3 cup canola oil (used vegetable and it was fine)
1/3 cup buttermilk (used milk with a little vinegar; totally fine)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup dark chocolate, cut into chunks
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Oil your loaf or muffin pans that you intend to use. (I used a stone loaf pan and a casserole dish. In the original recipe, it also has you use a piece of parchment paper on both. I didn’t feel the need to do that, so I skipped it. The bread came out of the pan just fine without it.)
Stir dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
In another bowl, whisk your eggs until they are foamy. Add oil, sugar, buttermilk, vanilla, and yogurt. Mix everything together until it is combined. Add zucchini and chocolate.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix into a batter. (I actually added the wet ingredients to the dry because I’d used the large bowl for the dry ingredients. T’was fine.)
Pour batter into your oiled pans or tins and place in oven to bake for roughly an hour. (It depends on you oven and altitude and all that jazz. Mine was in for about 45 minutes and was done.)
Take your bread out of the oven. Let it cool. (Check for witches. If there are any, throw a house (or a couch) at them. If not, enjoy!)
Stay tuned for the next Cooking Adventure!
~KSilva
The Kat At Night 