First: look what I bought! No more minced fingers for me.

Before I get into the recipe, let me take a moment to hang my head and admit it: I am a pretty horrible baker. With baking, you really have to follow the instructions exactly, and I’m more of a pinch-of-this dash-of-that kind of cook; I never actually believe that they’re serious when they say that you have to use measuring devices. Which is why my baking efforts are more often than not fairly disastrous.

I approached yesterday’s chocolate zucchini cake with my standard ill-advised mindset (meh, I don’t have a bundt pan, I’ll just use two square pans and adjust the baking time; meh, I only have 1 1/2 cups of regular sugar, let’s just top it off with some superfine)…but, miracle of miracles, it turned out wonderfully. If you make this cake, I would suggest using a bundt pan just because it ends up looking prettier, and if you have some food coloring around, consider dyeing the icing the palest shade of pink; so pretty against the dark chocolate cake.

CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI CAKE

Why zucchini, you ask? Because it lends an unbelievable moistness to the cake. Try it – you’ll see.

What you need:

2 cups flour

2 cups white sugar

3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

3 cups grated (careful!) zucchini

What you do:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour a large bundt pan (if you use two square pans, as I did, reduce baking time by about half).

2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

3. Add eggs and oil; mix well.

4. Gently fold in zucchini, and then pour into pan.

5. Bake approximately one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

6. Let cool completely before frosting.

CREAM CHEESE ICING

Oh my god, did I ever make a disaster out of this. Basically, the moment that I inserted the electric mixer into the butter and cream cheese, one of those sproingy things came sproinging off, absolutely coating my entire kitchen (including myself and Virgil) in glop. I of course responded by screaming and yanking the mixer out of the bowl so quickly that the cord went whipping sideways, overturning the measuring cup full of powdered sugar and sending a big white puff into the air.

See? So: don’t do that. Do this.

What you need:

4 oz cream cheese

4 oz butter

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

What you do:

1. Using a functional electric mixer, beat together butter and cream cheese until nicely blended.

2. Slowly add confectioner’s sugar (if you add too much at a time it’ll billow back up at you in aforementioned white puff), and then mix in vanilla.

3. Add a touch of food coloring, if desired (I didn’t have any sitting around, but I recommend pale pink).

Ta da!

You can also make chocolate zucchini cupcakes using this recipe, as reader Katie did.

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June 11th, 2010 | Posted by Jordan | Eat | 11 Comments »
Tags: Recipes