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Not sure what to do with all of that zucchini from your garden? Bake up a loaf of Vegan Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread! This healthy treat is free from oil and refined sugar.

Summer Zucchini

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I don’t have much of a green thumb. It hasn’t stopped me from enjoying fresh summer produce, though, as I have friends who are terrific gardeners, and they’re often very generous with their vegetable bounties.

I’ve noticed that zucchini is a summer garden favorite, and I’ve been gifted with fresh summer squash quite often. he first time I was given freshly harvest zucchini, many, many years ago, I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. At that point, the only way I had eaten zucchini was at my local diner where they battered and fried it for zucchini sticks. It wasn’t something I really wanted to try making on my own at home, so I reached for my favorite cookbook.

The Compassionate Cook

PETA’s The Compassionate Cook, or “Please Don’t Eat the Animals”was one of my first vegan cookbooks, and I cooked from it almost daily. It looks nothing like the vegan cookbooks we know and love today. It’s a small, photo-less paperback that’s printed on cheap paper, but it helped me learned to cook and I love it. My copy is dog-eared and stained, but it will always be an important part of my cookbook library

Zucchini Bread

So being gifted with a generous bunch of zucchinis, I consulted my copy of The Compassionate Cook and found a recipe for zucchini bread. It was easy to make and it used just a few ingredients. I was an avid baker and had everything I needed on hand, so I headed to the kitchen and whipped up a few loafs of delicious zucchini bread.

Did I mention that the zucchini bread was delicious? The recipe made two loaves, so I gave one to the person who had originally gifted me with the zucchini. She loved it, and she soon began giving me zucchini because she was hoping for a fresh loaf of bread in return.

The recipe from The Compassionate Cook used all purpose flour, commercial egg replacer, two cups of sugar, and a whole lot of oil. I don’t follow a totally sugar free or oil free diet, but it’s just too much for me, and I don’t cook that way anymore.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

I’ve been tinkering with the recipe over the years, swapping refined sugar for maple syrup and oil for apple sauce. I’ve also added walnuts and chocolate chips, because everything is better with chocolate chips. My new zucchini bread recipe really looks nothing like the recipe that inspired it, but it’s just as tasty—maybe even more so.

This vegan Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread is super easy to make. Just add a little apple cider vinegar to almond or soy milk and allow it to clabber, or curdle. This helps the bread bake up nice and fluffy. Then mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet in another. Mix the two together, and then fold in the zucchini, walnuts, and chocolate chips. And like magic, you’ll have a loaf of delicious vegan chocolate chip zucchini bread in less than an hour!

I don’t like my baked goods to be too sweet, so I’ve only used ¼ cup of maple syrup in my recipe. If you want a sweeter bread, you can add a little more.

A slice or two of vegan Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread pairs well with a cup of tea for a mid-afternoon snack! It makes a great grab-and-go breakfast, too.

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