Zucchini Bread (The Zucchini Chronicles, part 2)

Here lies my quest to utilize the zucchini bounty coming from our garden.  May the force be with me.

I went to the garden on Friday, and found the largest zucchini I've ever seen.  A real record-breaker.  The thing is, I thought we were doing an great job making sure we found all devils while they were still small and reasonable.  I guess one just snuck by.

I felt bad just throwing it out, even though we have 10 other squashes that need to be eaten, so I had to come up with a plan of attack.  What do you do when life throws you gigantic zucchinis?  Make zucchini bread.

I've never made this before, so I followed this highly rated recipe I found here, with a few changes.  I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and I added chocolate chips.  The result was something quite fabulous.  Next time, I'll add even more zucchini, as I felt it could have been a little more moist.  But, I'm going to be honest: between my husband and I we basically polished off two loaf pans of zucchini bread since friday (there's half of a loaf left, but it will likely be gone by tonight), so this recipe is a keeper.

Ingredients (makes 2 loaf pans)

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 teaspoons cinnamon

3 eggs

1 cup olive oil (or vegetable oil would work here too)

2 1/4 cups sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups grated zucchini (don't wring it out, you could probably get by adding 3 cups zucchini)

1 cup chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, soda, baking powder, cinnamon.  In another large bowl, beat eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil well.  Stir in dry ingredients until combined.  Stir in zucchini and chocolate chips until combined and evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Grease 2 loaf pans.  Divide batter between both loaf pans.  Bake for ~50 minutes, until golden brown, and toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Cool on wire rack before cutting.  Feel no shame if you eat an entire loaf yourself.