Chocolate Courgette Loaf

BBC Radio Lancashire came to visit us yesterday for the Lunchtime Favourites programme and this is the cake I chose to feature when Maria Felix Vas was visiting, its a difficult task to select just 12 tracks that represent your life so far, I enjoyed the making the programme and the bake went do very well. 

I thought I'd refresh the post in honour of the visit, I hope you enjoy the bake!

This recipe was created in celebration of the annual courgette glut , I am revisiting my Prize winning Chocolate courgette loaf, as published in Green and Blacks - Chocolate Recipes - Unwrapped.

Its a really easy recipe if a little fragile when it first comes out of the oven. If you wish to guild the lily you can ice and fill if with jam or cream, it is quite rich already so I prefer it plain.

Ingredients

• 175g Dark chocolate ( at least 60% cocoa solids)
• 225g courgettes
• 200g Plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarb of soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp vanilla paste (optional)
• 110g caster sugar
• 175ml sunflower oil
• 2 medium eggs

Method

Preheat oven to 180c / 350f/gas mark 4

Greased and lined 2lb loaf tin

Melt the chocolate, I use the microwave, but be careful don't overheat. Grate the courgettes in your bowl, sift the flour, baking powders and spices into the bowl, add the other ingredients and mix well, lastly add the slightly cooled chocolate. I use my food processor but a bowl is fine too. Pour into your prepared tin and bake for approx 50 mins, test with a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave in the tin to cool, before finishing the cooling process on a wire rack.

The loaf stores well in a tin and also freezes well.

I am also going to include this post in We should Cocoa this month hosted by Jibberjabber and created by Chocolate log blog, the theme is vegetables.