Zucchini (Courgette) Chocolate Cake

Another crappy weather day in paradise.

I had some zucchini sitting in the fridge and I remembered a cake I used to make years ago. After searching through my cookbooks I found the recipe. I know you are all thinking eeeeeew that sounds pretty revolting, but if you think how yummy carrot cake is, this is just as good.  Yes, you can see the odd bit of green in amongst the chocolate cake, but you definitely can't taste it, so I'm not sure whether discerning children would eat it when they see the flecks of green, unless you can come up with a really good explanation of why it has green bits in it.  It is unusual, but a very moist and flavourful cake.

There are no decent photos of the cake, see the big hollow in the middle. I have been trying baking cakes using White Wings gluten free flour.  White Wings says that you can substitute this flour for normal flour in baking, sauces etc.  You can, but each time I have substituted it has changed the cake, and this time it was beautifully moist, tasted fabulous, but it sunk in the middle and fell apart when I tried to put it on a serving plate. I gave up trying to make the ganache look good, when the cake was disintegrating under it. See below, and this is after I had salvaged it.

I do recommend this recipe, but make it with normal wheat flour and it won't look like this when it is out of the oven.

I don't know why the cake looks a different colour in the above photo, I didn't notice it until I loaded it onto the post, and I am way too lazy too get out the camera again, take a photo, load it onto the computer etc.



Zucchini Chocolate Cake

125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup yoghurt
1/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice ( I didn't use this as I didn't have any)
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups grated zucchini (approx 350g - 12 oz)

Prepare a 25 cm square pan (10") by lining it with 2 cross wise strips of baking paper. Beat the butter with the sugars until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of the measured flour to prevent the mixture curdling. Add the vanilla and yoghurt and mix well. (It curdled at this stage anyway!!!!)

Sift dry ingredients together. Stir in with the grated zucchini. Turn into prepared pan. Cook at 170C (340F) for 45 mins or until centre feels firm and a skewer comes out clean.

You can put 1/2 to 1 cup of chocolate pieces in the batter before cooking, if you want to up the chocolate, I didn't have enough as I wanted to use it for the icing, but I must admit it is fabulous with the extra chocolate. However, without the extra chocolate it is still very very nice.  I iced it with a dark chocolate ganache.


The recipe is from a New Zealand cookbook -  The Best of Home Cooking by Alison Holst.