This World Chocolate Day, explore some unique chocolate recipes like this chocolate zucchini bread. This dessert or baked treat is one of a kind and can be a great conversation starter as this loaf emerges from the oven looking dark, almost brownie-like, with melted chocolate chips visible at the top and a crumb so moist and fudgy that first-time tasters inevitably will ask what is in it. The answer lies in the shredded zucchini, which tends to cause disbelief, then conversion. Baking with zucchini is quite easy and perfect to try on World Chocolate Day, when your goal is to produce the most intensely satisfying chocolate experience ever. Zucchini does not have any pronounced flavour, which is what makes baking with it so delightful. It contributes enough moisture to the chocolate bread, which is released during baking and also into the batter for a crumb that stays soft and tender for days after baking. It’s the same principle that works for a carrot cake and also an apple cake. The cocoa in this chocolate zucchini bread recipe must be natural, unsweetened cocoa powder, not Dutch-process. Natural cocoa (fruity flavour) is acidic and reacts with the baking soda in the recipe to produce lift and structure. Dutch-process cocoa has been treated to neutralise its acidity (with a mellow flavour) and will not react the same way, potentially producing a denser, flatter loaf. The espresso powder also boosts the flavour of the cocoa exponentially without tipping the bread into coffee territory.

Chocolate cherry sandwich cookies are proof that one of the best things you can bake on World Chocolate Day requires no special equipment, no tempering of chocolate, and no more than thirty minutes to make a delicious chocolate dessert. All you need is a cake mix, preferably chocolate, or you’ll have to use cocoa powder, to make softer cookies that are a hallmark of whoopie pies or sandwich cookies. Into the cake mix go an egg and butter to make the cookie dough, which is shaped and baked. The filling is where it gets interesting because these chocolate cherry sandwich cookies use Maraschino cherries, which are premium syrup-soaked preserved cherries which you can source from any speciality supermarket or online stores. Along with the cherries goes their juice into the classic butter-and-powdered-sugar base that makes the buttercream. The cherry juice does double duty here: it tints the buttercream a pale pink and also makes it sweeter, with an unmistakably cherry flavour. Before trying the recipe, here are some tips, that even an easy dessert recipe, which is a World Chocolate Day special, needs patience. The cookies must be completely cooled before the frosting goes on. A warm cookie will melt the butter in the buttercream, and the frosting will slide, thin out, and lose the thick, holdable consistency that makes a good sandwich cookie worth eating. The buttercream also needs to be sufficiently thick for the cookies to stick, so make sure to adjust the consistency if too thick or runny.

Monsoon calls for cherry recipes, and cherry galette fits right in and is cosy and warm. This dessert looks like it requires far more skill than it actually does, and unlike a traditional pie, a galette skips the pie dish altogether. The dough is rolled into a rough circle, the filling is piled in the centre, and the edges are simply folded up and over, pleating as you go, with the slightly imperfect, free-form shape being the entire point. It does not need any lattice work or any pastry-making skills that an ornate pie demands. The crust here is a classic all-butter pastry, built in a food processor, using cold butter that leads to the flaky, layered texture once baked. You can make the dough, more than you need, and make it two days in advance and freeze it for longer storage. The filling for this cherry galette is simple, using fresh cherries, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla extract and almond extract. The almond extract is a small addition but makes a noticeable difference, drawing out the cherries' natural depth without tasting distinctly of almond. How to make a cherry galette at home comes down to one key technique – the fold. You have to work around the circle of dough, lift the edge up and over the filling every three to four inches, slightly overlapping each fold as you go. This creates the signature pleated border while leaving the centre of the fruit exposed to heat, which is exactly what allows the cherries to bubble, concentrate, and caramelise at the edges. For best results, use fresh, in-season cherries, which will always give the best flavour.