Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Maybe more people would eat their vegetables if vegetables were covered in chocolate. It worked for me with this chocolate zucchini cake.

The Story

The first time I had zucchini with chocolate was after a brief experiment with Weight Watchers. If you have not tried Weight Watchers before, there is a point-counting system. Everything you eat is assigned a point value, and you can only have a certain number of points each day.

The first day I diligently counted every point. I also bought a zucchini to make a Weight Watcher vegetable soup recipe, which had an allowable number of points and sounded like it might taste OK.

By the end of the first day, I learned the point-counting system is crazy! The number of points allotted each day wouldn’t sustain a baby bird, let alone an adult human.

By day two, I decided Weight Watchers was for the birds, and I quit. Instead of making soup, I used the zucchini to make chocolate zucchini bread. It may have been a million points, but I didn’t care. It was delicious.

The Rest of the Story

A few years later, I lost more than 30 pounds — without any crazy point-counting system. I simply made small, sustainable changes in my diet and exercise routine over a long period of time. I gradually ate a little less at each meal and exercised a little bit more each day. I still enjoyed my favorite foods (like chocolate) in moderation and worked in more healthy options (like vegetables) along the way. Four years later, I have kept the weight off.

The Moral of the Story

Life’s too short to count points. It’s the small changes that count most. Make gradual changes in your diet and exercise that you can sustain over a long period of time.

About the Recipe

I started with a zucchini bread recipe from my family cookbook. The original recipe is from someone named Darlene and includes nuts and coconut. I added chocolate chips and cocoa powder, and baked it in a bundt pan — turning it into a cake.

The Cast of Characters

Zucchini and chocolate make the perfect pairing in this cake.

The Play-by-Play

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cocoa. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat the eggs until fluffy.

Add the sugar to the eggs.

Pour in the oil.

Add the vanilla, and mix well.

Mix in the shredded zucchini.

Add the flour and cocoa mixture.

Stir until blended.

Grind the walnuts and add them to the batter.

Stir in the toasted coconut.

Add the chocolate chips.

Pour the batter into the bundt pan.

Bake for an hour, and let cool in the pan for 15 minutes.

Invert the pan onto a wire rack to remove the cake, and cool completely.

The Footnotes

• Prepping the pan: Generously grease your baking pan with shortening and sprinkle with flour before adding your batter. I used almost a quarter of a cup of shortening when greasing my pan. This helps avoid a sticky situation later.
• Time for baking: Try reducing the baking time, and bake just until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Since the original recipe was for two loafs of zucchini bread, I wasn’t sure how long to bake it as a cake. I followed a tip from Marion Cunningham’s Fannie Farmer Baking Book, which said to bake a chocolate zucchini cake for about an hour. I might bake it a little less next time, as it was a bit drier than I would have liked.
• Time for cooling: Let the cake cool for 15 minutes in the pan before turning it out on a wire rack to cool completely. This is another tip from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book. It worked like a dream, and the cake came right out of the pan.
• Tips for serving: Serve with strawberries, whipped cream, ice cream or all three! I marinated the strawberries in honey a few hours before serving and the juices from the strawberries compensated for the dryness of the cake. I also added scoops of strawberry ice cream and whipped cream on the side.

Additional Resources

Here are some other interesting recipes pairing chocolate with vegetables:

• Chocolate Carrot Cake Cupcakes by Baking Bites
• Chocolate Beetroot Cake by Food.com
• Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins by Joy of Baking
• Chocolate Potato Cake by Taste of Home
• Sweet Potato Brownies by Food.com
• Chocolate Tomato Cake by Serious Eats

If you could pair any vegetable with chocolate, which one would you pick?