Vegan Chocolate Zucchini Cake…Tart?

As I mentioned earlier today, I scored a massive zucchini from one of our research farms (I’m a web developer for a  Plant Sciences department). I’ve never seen such a huge zucchini, have you? With Neil and I already being sparse eaters, and Neil hating the taste of zucchini on its own (brat!), I had to find a way — or realistically multiple ways — to use this awesome veggie without it tasting like — itself. My mind always prioritizes dessert first, so I adapted my recipe for vegan chocolate banana cake for the addition of zucchini. The result was less cake-like and more tart, so I added a yummy almond and brown sugar topping.

It’s so good!

I’m not normally a huge fan of zucchini bread, I tend to think it needs something sweet like chocolate in order to be palatable. I’ve been nom’ing this like crazy. It’s almost embarrassing. Sneaking bites for breakfast, in the middle of the night, and taking it to work for a snack. I should add that I doubled the recipe (we were originally supposed to go to two barbecues) and got 2 cakes and a loaf of bread, so I had more than plenty leftover through no fault of my own. My poor diet never seems to catch a break! Luckily this is vegan and as healthy as cake can be, full of not only zucchini but bananas and applesauce as well. You’ll also notice the addition of a food processor to our kitchen inventory. Neil had some credit card reward points to use up and surprised me with it last week!

Ingredients:

2 cups Whole wheat flour
½ cup Cocoa powder
1 teaspoon Baking soda
½ teaspoon Baking powder
¼ teaspoon Salt
¼ cup Canola oil
¼ cup Unsweetened applesauce
½ cup Granulated sugar
½ cup Light brown sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 teaspoon Instant coffee powder
1 ½ bananas (to replace 3 eggs)
4 Tablespoons Water
¼ cup Soy Milk
2 cups Zucchini, grated
1 cup vegan dark chocolate chips

For Topping:
3 Tablespoons Light brown sugar
½ cup Slivered Almonds, chopped

Directions:

1. 1. Preheat oven to 360 F. Grease and flour a 9-inch cake pan.
2. 2. In a large mixing bowl sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
3. 3. Mash the bananas. Once mashed, add the water and mix together.
4. 4. In a medium combine oil, applesauce, sugars, vanilla extract and coffee powder. Stir or beat with mixer for 3-5 minutes.
5. 5. Now add the banana + water and mix. Add milk and beat until well combined.
6. 6. Set aside half a cup of the flour mixture, add slowly the remaining flour to the wet ingredients, while mixing it in at a low speed. Combine the grated zucchini, chocolate chips and 1/2 cup of flour. Add this to the batter and mix it well. The batter will be very thick, so no worries.
7. 7. Pour the batter in the prepared cake pan and smooth it out using a spatula.
8. 8. Mix brown sugar and almonds for the toping and spread evenly over the batter. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes.

If anything, you can probably ditch the oil. The zucchini, bananas, and applesauce are MORE than enough moisture. If you’re froggy, caramelizing the brown sugar and almonds on the stove top and adding after the cake bakes will probably work well also. If you can believe it, I still have a third of this monster zucchini left, so stay tuned!