Chocolate Raspberry Zucchini Bread Florentine

We have way too many yellow squash in our garden, and it's raspberry season. Trying to figure out a way to creatively use both, I came up with this. Use the yellow squash just like zucchini and since raspberries are a perfect complement to chocolate, some chocolate chips were an easy addition.

Part I. Making the bread.

Grease and flour two loaf pans or one large bundt cake pan. (We used the cake pan because of part two, below.)

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 (1.5) tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

6 T. unsweetened cocoa powder

6 oz plain greek nonfat yogurt

2 t. vanilla

2 large eggs

1/2 cup canola oil

3 cups grated yellow squash (or zucchini)

3/4 cup of chocolate chips (6 oz)

1 cup of fresh raspberries (I used more like 1 1/2 cups and the raspberry flavor was intense!)

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add yogurt, vanilla, eggs, and oil and stir to a smooth consistency. Add raspberries and smash them while mixing. Then add squash and chocolate chips. Mix with a wooden spoon until well-blended.

Bake at 350 for about an hour, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean except for the part that touches melted chocolate chips.

Cool thoroughly if you can wait that long.

Part II. Floor-entine.

This is what happens when you try to work without the oversight of your kitchen supervisor.

We decided to invoke the three second rule.

We scraped up all the batter except for the quarter inch or so that was actually touching the floor, and salvaged most of it. Not a single dog hair was seen in the entire loaf, which disappeared faster than you can say, "three second rule".

Somewhere, Iris is watching us and laughing as only Iris can, with her distinctive, incomparable smile.

In Memory of Iris, Kitchen Supervisor Extraordinaire

Very sad news.

Our beautiful Iris, who ran not just the kitchen, but the entire household, and the heartbeat of our family, is no longer with us. For fourteen years she herded us around the kitchen, checking every step and ingredient in each recipe. Nothing escaped her attention, she always insisted on precision and perfection. Here is her obituary.

Iris would have wanted us to continue having fun in the kitchen, so we are doing our best to carry on. Our kitchen has not been the same, and as you will see in our next post, we are helpless without her. We know she is watching us, and laughing at us from the other side.

Iris's last snack was raspberries picked fresh from the garden, and we have chosen to honor her with a couple of creative favorites in the next two posts.