Recipe #20 - Chocolate Zucchini Bread

This morning, I woke up to use the restroom about 4:15 AM.  When I went back to bed, I couldn't get to sleep for the life of me.  I refused to wake up so early, so my plan was to lay in bed until I fell asleep.  Thirty minutes later, I was still awake and frustrated.

One thing that you need to know about me is that I'm a night owl.  Like a hard core night owl.  During my "busy season" it isn't uncommon for me to be up night after night until 2 or 3 AM.  If I get 6 hours of sleep, I'm good.  Five hours of sleep?  Not quite as kind, but still fine.

Well its a good thing that I went to bed at midnight last night and actually got 9 hours of sleep the night before, because I was up and at 'em before 5:00 today. 

Who enjoys this hour?  Like people really get up at this time of day on purpose?  Ugh.  Now if I have a flight to catch for some wonderful vacation, WAKE ME UP AT 3:00 AM!  Who cares!  But, since I didn't have a flight planned, I didn't know what to do with myself at 5 AM...wide awake.

So I started to bake.  Had I known that this was going to happen, I would have had the ingredients to make a super delicious breakfast for my family.  But never in my wildest imagination did I expect to see the kitchen so early.  I did, however, have all the ingredients to make Chocolate Zucchini Bread on page 40.  It can also be found online here.

First you mix up the ingredients for your topping.

Then you whisk together your dry ingredients.

Then you go close all the doors to the bedrooms because it is time to turn on the mixer, and heaven help the child who wakes up early today!  Its one thing to be up myself, but at the very least, I can be alone.  Ironically, just before I turned the mixer on, my husband came to the top of the stairs all sleepy-eyed and said, "What in the world are you doing?"  I sent him back to bed and mixed together the wet ingredients.

Last time I made zucchini bread, I hand-grated the zucchini.  I have a food processor, but using it requires me to wash a lot of parts.  Okay, like 4, but still.  So I don't tend to get it out unless it would really helpful.  Last time I grated zucchini, I determined that a food processor would be worth cleaning...well, if your kids are awake.  This morning, I revisited my hand grater. 

Oh, and I grated my knuckle.  Not cool.  But don't worry, it stayed semi-attached and didn't make it in the bread.  Got myself a Littlest Petshop Bandaid and sent a child back to bed.

Next you add a spoonful of the dry ingredients to your chocolate chips.

This is done to coat your chocolate and help keep them evenly distributed in the bread.  Awesome trick that works great.  Then you stir it all together and load into the pans.  Next you eat some of the chocolate chips left in the bag.  Don't judge; I haven't had breakfast. 

One tip in the cookbook is that the recipe makes two very large 8-inch loaves or two less full 9-inch loaves.  It suggests making one of each.  So that's what I did.

Then you sprinkle your topping over the batter.

And into the oven it goes!  About 50 minutes later, your house smells divine and its time for breakfast!

I sat down to write this blog, with chocolate zucchini bread in hand, when my husband woke up.  He happened to walk into the office when I realized that all my photos of the final product were semi-blurry.  The problem was I was eating the piece that I cut off for the picture.  My sweet husband said, "If you need to take another picture, you could cut a piece for me..."  Way to take one for the team, honey!

Pretty sure that this might be a part of breakfast for the whole family.  Nothing like a mom who feeds her kids healthy meals.  Off to change into my workout clothes and to hit the elliptical before everyone else wakes up!