Zucchini Double Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Posted on September 7, 2008 - Filed Under tea treats, Desserts, Recipes, Cakes | 6 Comments
Yesterday I made a cake from one of the larger zucchini harvested from our garden. I really enjoy zucchini bread but I felt like making something chocolate. The orange juice and zest in the cream cheese frosting is a nice note against the chocolate -I think. You won’t even know the zucchini is in the cake once it’s baked- it just makes a nice, dark, moist cake.
Zucchini Double Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 4 ounces of melted Guittard Oban chocolate (or other good quality unsweetened chocolate)
- 1/4 pound of butter, softened
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 3 eggs, room temperature
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all purpose unbleached flour
- 1/3 cup cocoa ( I prefer Valrhona but any good quality is fine)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 buttermilk
- 3 packed cups of coarsely grated zucchini, wash first and grate without peeling)
- 1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
Mix the oil and melted chocolate and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and vanilla and beat well. Mix in the oil/melted chocolate. Mix the flour, cocoa, soda, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl and using a whisk mix them all well so no cocoa lumps remain. Add the buttermilk and mix to smooth then stir in the zucchini and nuts. Spread in a 9 x 13 baking pan that has been greased and lined with parchment paper. Smooth the top and bake in preheated 350F oven for about 45 minutes or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack. Then frost- either the whole cake or individual pieces- but once frosted it must be refrigerated due to the cream cheese in the frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting with Orange
- 8 ounces cream cheese
- 1/3 cup softened butter
- 1 pound confectioner’s sugar
- zest from one whole orange, finely grated
- juice from 1/2 orange or just enough to get the texture you like
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle or in a bowl with a hand-mixer, cream the cream cheese and butter together and add the powdered sugar in a steady stream while your mixer runs. Add the zest, orange juice and vanilla extract and beat well. Use to frost or refrigerate until ready to use.
Enjoy!
Zucchini Madness
Posted on September 6, 2008 - Filed Under health focused recipes, side dishes, Salads, Recipes, Gardening | 9 Comments
Every Spring I forget about zucchini-I look at the tiny innocent looking plants that my Mum gives me or that I plant in a peat pot or that I purchase at the nursery and I think- I’ll plant two -they’re small- what if one dies? But I forget that they are hardy to the point of madness and that once producing they never relent. I think we could solve world hunger at least in the Summer with just a few plants ;) Zucchini are the stuff of urban gardening legend in my town. A few weeks into the season neighbors start looking like deer caught in the headlights if they see you headed towards them with yet more zucchini. There are doorbell ditches and boxes of marrows left on break-room tables at work with signs saying”free- PLEASE take me home!”
Please don’t misunderstand- I love zucchini- it’s just that after a while I feel like I’m stuck in that Monty Python sketch- Lupine stew, just insert zucchini for the “bloody lupines”. So right now I have a Chocolate Zucchini Cake in the oven- hopefully I’ll share that tomorrow- and we’ve had zucchini 89,000,000 ways and there are still four zucchini waiting on my counter to be dealt with enjoyed.
So for tonight, it’s a grated fresh zucchini salad:
Zucchini Salad
- 2 cups of coarsely grated fresh zucchini skin on but washed well before grating
- 3 Tablespoons Port Balsamic vinegar
- 4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 clove minced garlic
- salt
- freshly ground pepper
- chopped fresh tomato
- one purple shallot, slivered
- 1 cup cubed Feta cheese
- 1/3 cup pine nuts
Just mix it all together and let it sit for the flavours to mingle and develop.
Hope you enjoy!
xo
Pass the Mustard!
Posted on September 4, 2008 - Filed Under Herbs/Spices/Condiments | 9 Comments
Have you ever made homemade mustard? Oh it’s so easy and so good and you can put just the flavours you like in it.
Mustard -basic recipe
- 4 Tablespoons yellow mustard powder- commercial or make your own just make sure it’s pulverized well and sift it if you do
(add a Tablespoon of flour if you make your own powdered mustard) - 1 cup boiling water
- 3/4 cup yellow mustard seeds, ground coarsely in a mortar or spice grinder
- 1/4 cup brown mustard seeds, ground coarsely in a mortar or spice grinder
- 1/4 cup white wine vinegar or other you like (I used champagne vinegar in this batch)
- 1/4 cup other liquid= beer, orange juice etc. (I used hard cider in this batch)
- add-ins such as herbs, honey (I added 2 Tablespoons of my peach jam to this one)
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
Pour the boiling water over the powder, ground seeds and salt. Let sit until absorbed a bit and add the other ingredients. Let this all sit for a couple of hours at room temperature until the liquid is absorbed. Stir, taste and adjust for any seasoning or flavour. Store in the fridge. This one is particularly good on ham- I think.
Hope you enjoy!
Proud Mama of a new Peach Tree
Posted on September 3, 2008 - Filed Under rants, faves, Faves, Rants and Raves, Gardening | 4 Comments
We had an old peach tree in our garden-I don’t know what variety-it must have been decades old. It had the most delicious free-stone peaches ever. I think the poor tree died from old age. It gave out gradually so that at the end only one small branch was producing. I admit it- I cried when it gave its last gasp. Rick was kind enough to make me a curving beautiful hand carved “wand” from its wood and some of the trunk remains in the garden- a sort of organic marker of times past.
In thinking what I wanted to plant in its place, I considered a pie cherry. You know of course what a fiend I am for tart pie cherries so it would be a good choice. But in the end I longed for a peach tree where it had always been- framed at the end of our pergola- bridal in springtime and gracing us with peaches for Rick’s favourite peach pie in late Summer.
Several years ago, Saturn (or donut)peaches began to appear in the gourmet market- at first they were luscious, sweet and juicy -the height of peachyness. Then commercial greed caught on and “The Market” took hold and now we notice that they are picked green. Hello?!- you can’t pick peaches green and expect them to taste good- they do not continue to convert sugar and ripen once they are picked. So you might get good looking large donut peaches this way but they are tasteless. So we’ve ceased to buy them- I pick them up at the grocery and smell- if a peach doesn’t smell like a peach in the market don’t buy it - you’re wasting your money.
We decide to plant a dwarf Stark Bros. Saturn Peach, the wee little tree had several half dollar sized peaches on it when we snagged it at the nursery. I didn’t want to lose them by planting the peach until they were harvested so we’ve waited until fall to plant and lately have been plucking little jewels of juicy peach goodness- literal treasure that grows on trees. In a few weeks when it’s a bit cooler and the tree has recovered from harvest. We’ll plant her and let her set her roots before Winter comes. Hopefully next year we’ll have a whole new crop and a lovely peach tree to hold court in our garden.
