Delicious zucchini breads

To be perfectly honest, I can barely stomach zucchini on its own, but even I know that zucchini bread is amazing.  Mom and Gram sent us home with a couple of zucchinis from the garden last time we were home, so I decided to take that next step into momhood and whip up a couple o' breads.  Here's the recipe I used ("Mom's Zucchini Bread" from allrecipes.com):

Prep Time:
20 Min

Cook Time:
1 Hr

Ready In:
1 Hr 40 Min

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

And that's pretty much what I did, except that...

1. I probably would have been sneaky and used less sugar than that, but Ben did the majority of the measuring and mixing and that would be appalling to him.
2. I wasn't about to spend $6.99 on a bag of chopped walnuts so I used the mixed nuts that we already had instead.
3. I tried chopping the nuts in the Magic Bullet but half the nuts turned to powder in .5 seconds.  So I sifted out the chunks and mixed them into the batter, and I used the nutty powder as a topping.
4. I only own one bread pan, so I had to wait to make the second bread.  
5. Also, that one "bread pan" is a 9"x5" glass casserole dish, so I think that threw off the baking time a bit.  I ended up baking the first bread for 65 minutes and the second one (which was slightly larger) for 75 or so.
6. I wanted to try a chocolate bread also, so I added 3 tablespoons of special dark cocoa baking powder to the second half of the batter.  I also mixed some brown sugar in with the powdery nut topping.  The chocolate "bread" (I mean, let's be honest, this is more like cake) seems perhaps a bit less moist than the original, so maybe it needed something else to go with the cocoa?

Both of the zucchini breads (my first ever) turned out pretty darn good.  But I'm not saying there isn't a better recipe out there...