Chocolate patty pan squash bread

I don't know about you, but I hate being stumped. Our CSA box arrived with these white pumpkin-like squashes that looked like they had tumors. That is a pretty harsh description, but I honestly had never seen anything like this before. Enter exhibit A:

See? Don't they look like white pumpkins with tumors? Or maybe a frilly muffin top? Or a funky head of garlic? I looked on our CSA delivery sheet, and someone had crossed out cucumbers and hand-wrote "patty pan" right next to it. Patty what? My husband was just as perplexed as I was and immediately took his phone out and Googled it.

Sure enough, there was a vegetable called a patty pan squash. Huh. Now that I knew that this veggie was called, what do I do with it? Maybe I could paint it and make it look like a pumpkin. Or use it as a door stop. Or... make a chocolate patty pan bread!

Once again, Google saved the day. I came across a chocolate patty pan bread recipe on The Harmonious Kitchen and knew that this is how I would use up the squash. I read through the ingredients and instructions, and it looked very similar to all the zucchini breads I've made recently. 


The resulting patty pan bread was amazing! As I suspected, the bread tasted very similar to the chocolate zucchini bread that I posted about recently.  It was very chocolatey, moist, and you couldn't taste much of the patty pan at all. Take a look at who else enjoyed this bread:

Addison loves her patty pan bread!

Ingredients

• 2 cups grated patty pan squash (do not substitute with other squash! Patty pan squash has less water content than other squash, so if you used another type of squash, your bread's consistency will be off)
• 1 cup oil
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1-1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1/4 cup sour cream (I subbed with 1/4 cup Greek yogurt)
• 2 TBSP baking powder
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour a 9×5 loaf pan. 

Mix the oil, eggs, and both sugars until well incorporated.  Then add in flour, cocoa powder, sour cream, and baking powder. Mix well. Finally, gently stir in squash and chocolate chips.

Bake for 60 – 70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle yields no crumbs. 

The Harmonious Kitchen author also says that you could make this into a cake too. Just grease and flour two 9″ cake rounds, divide the batter, and bake 25 – 30 minutes.

Yield: One loaf

Source: The Harmonious Kitchen