Recipe: Chocolate chip zucchini bread

Your kids will never know there are vegetables in there!

This is the time of year when New Englanders joke to one another that they'd better remember to lock their car doors, lest they should wake up one morning to find their vehicles filled to bursing with zucchini. 

These fine green squash are so prolific that that you can never have enough recipes for 'em.  Here's a recipe that turns an ordinary vegetable into an extroardinary dessert:

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread
Adapted from Molly Katzen's Zucchini Spice Bread recipe in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

Ingredients

• 2 cups packed, grated zucchini
• 6 tbsp melted butter
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 cup choclate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Let the grated zucchini drain in a colander while you prepare the rest of the bread.
3. Combine the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in one bowl, and the dry ingredients in another.
4. Squeeze any excess water from the zucchini.  Mix it together with the wet ingredients, then slowly stir in the dry ingredients and chocolate chips.
5. Grease a medium-sized loaf pan and fill it with the batter.  Bake 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out dry.  Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn onto a rack and allow to cool for another 30 minutes before serving.

This bread freezes well.  Or, if you don't want to bake on a hot summer day, simply grate the zucchini and freeze it in ziploc bags in 2-cup portions.  Thaw it when the weather cools, and you can bake a summer treat.