Recipe: Chocolate Zucchini Loaf

I’ve been doing some recipe development for a magazine recently, and they required a recipe for a Zucchini Cake to include in their next issue. I regularly make my Zucchini Pie with Bacon and Cherry Tomatoes, but I can’t say I’ve ever made a sweet zucchini dish. Always one to rise to a challenge, I remembered an old carrot recipe that was given to as a teenager (when carrot cakes were at the height of culinary fashion) and I used it to create this recipe for Chocolate Zucchini Loaf. Like its Carrot Cake counterpart, this is a very moist cake with the goodness of vegetables (in this case zucchinis) hidden in the cake. It’s really delicious served as afternoon tea, or as dessert with fresh strawberries and triple cream. You could ice it with a chocolate ganache, but I reckon it’s perfect just as it is.

Ingredients:
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup honey
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
175g butter, melted
1½ cups self-raising flour
½ cup cocoa
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ cups (200g) grated zucchini (about 3 medium zucchinis)
To serve: sifted icing sugar

Method (Prep 10 mins, cooking time 50 mins):
1.    Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced).  Grease a medium loaf tin and line the base with baking paper.
2.    Mix together the eggs, honey, lemon juice and melted butter in a large bowl. Sift together the flour, cocoa, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda in a separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients and the grated zucchini to the wet ingredients and fold together.  Pour into the prepared tin.
3.    Bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin. To serve, dust with sifted icing sugar.