Chocolate zucchini cake may sound weird, but it is delicious and fun way to eat your vegetables!
It is so zucchini season, is it not? Whether you are a gardener overrun with the stuff or a savvy farmers’ market shopper buying 6 zucchini for $4, these green squash are everywhere.
In fact, I’m going to be on WGN’s Midday News Lunch Break segment this Thursday, September 3 — which happens to be Zuzu’s birthday — at 11:45 am talking about some new and novel ways to use this vegetable. No more leaving zucchini on your neighbor’s porch! No more boring sautéed zucchini! We are going to make zucchini fun again.
And what is more fun than cake? Nothing! So to prove just what a good-time vegetable zucchini is, the first recipe I am going to demonstrate on WGN is my famous chocolate zucchini cake. Okay, it may not be famous yet, but this recipe, in a slightly altered form, will appear in my forthcoming food swap cookbook (tentatively titled — wait for it — Food Swap).
For the book, I made mini chocolate zucchini Bundt cakes which are the perfect size for swapping or gifting. But for regular old eating, a normal-sized chocolate zucchini Bundt cake is hard to beat at this time of year. You can’t taste it, but the zucchini adds moisture, a hint of crunch and a whiff of virtuousness, probably undeserved.
To give credit where credit is due, I first saw the recipe for chocolate zucchini cake from an online article by food writer and cookbook author Kim O’Donnel a decade ago. I have tinkered with it many times since. It’s a workhorse for me.
If you are keeping things simple, you can serve the cake as it is with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar, but if you want to impress, glaze it with a chocolate ganache. As always when baking with chocolate, I like to add a teaspoon of espresso powder to pump up the chocolate flavor. One of my little baking secrets! You can find espresso powder online or at Sur La Table.
For this recipe and more zucchini ideas, please check on my segment on WGN’s Midday News this Thursday at 11:45 am!
Ingredients
- 3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
- 3 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons espresso powder
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 4 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups vegetable or olive oil
- 2 cups grated zucchini (typically one large zucchini)
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Confectioner’s sugar (optional)
- 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350. Spray the inside of a Bundt pan with nonstick baking spray.
- Melt the unsweetened chocolate in a small saucepan over very low heat. Set aside and allow to cool.
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, espresso powder if using, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
- In the bowl of a standing mixer, mix the eggs and sugar together on medium speed until light and thick, about two minutes. Gradually add the oil while mixing on low speed. Continue to mix until the batter is thick and bright yellow, about one and a half minutes.
- Add the melted chocolate to the batter and mix. Gradually add the dry ingredients, scraping down the sides as necessary.
- Mix in the zucchini and chocolate chips by hand, making sure that they are thoroughly incorporated.
- Ladle the batter into the Bundt pan.
- Bake about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a rack.
- Dust top with confectioner’s sugar or glaze with chocolate ganache. (Cool cakes completely before glazing.)
- To make the glaze, place the chopped chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Bring the cream just to a boil and pour it over the chocolate. Allow the heat of the cream to melt the chocolate, then whisk together. Allow the ganache to cool for five minutes.
- Inverty the cooled cake onto the cooling rack. To glaze, drizzle the ganache on the top of the cake, letting some run down the sides.
