This post contains affiliate links. I will be compensated for purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you. All views expressed are my own. Sometimes I think about how our grandparents, great grandparents, and maybe even our parents grew up having dessert as part of their dinner fairly regularly. My mother in law came to visit about a month ago and was talking about how every Sunday night there was pie. Her mom would bake a pie once a week. Once a week! I love baking desserts, but I generally avoid making dessert for dinner because it takes extra time, and then there are all the extra calories. Dessert is usually reserved for when we're having people over. Sometimes though, I think about having Sunday dinner with dessert. With that thought in mind, I baked this cake yesterday. We shared our Chocolate zucchini cake recipe and I thought about baking that because I had some zucchini, but I also had bananas and thought maybe a non-chocolate cake would be nice. So I did some experimenting and came up with this zucchini banana cake with a delicious cream cheese frosting. We all enjoyed it, and really, you get the added bonus of knowing that even though you're eating cake, there is a vegetable AND A fruit in it, zucchini and banana! A great marriage for a great, moist cake that you can say is healthy (er)! It's a win win. Although, I did decide I'd probably hold off on Sunday night desserts until we have more children and they are a bit older. Because, that leaves a lot of cake to finish off during the week, and I have a husband who doesn't eat leftovers. It's really not helpful. YOU can make this cake, and it will be a hit! I threw my zucchini in the food processor because it is faster. I chopped them up until they looked like this. I threw the zucchini in last and just left it sitting on a paper towel to absorb moisture until I was ready for them.
This zucchini banana cake is also easy to make gluten free. I just substituted regular flour for Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free All Purpose Flour and it still turned out great! Also, if you wanted to make it vegan you could substitute the eggs for flax eggs and instead of cream cheese frosting, make coconut whipped cream instead! I might try that the next time because I do think the whipped cream would go perfectly with the light taste of this cake! Happy baking!
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Hey Alicia here.
We originally posted this recipe last year in May, but I live in a different state and didn't get to try the cake the first time around. So, I made it recently with a giant zucchini my friend gave me from her garden and it was seriously THE BEST CAKE I'VE EVER HAD. It was fluffy, moist, soft, chocolatey, deliciousness. It was light and airy. I wanted to make this cake again before it was even all gone. I especially love that this cake doesn't need frosting. The brown sugar chocolate chip topping was PERFECT! I decided we need to share this recipe again because now Is the time of year when people start finding huge zucchini in their yards that are perfect for baking. Try this, you will NOT regret it. Seriously, I'm considering not eating zucchini any other way from now on. To really make your cake fluffy make sure you cream the butter and sugar really well, until they are light and fluffy and almost increase in volume. Doing this helps to trap air into the batter. Then I repeated this process when I added the egg in (beating it for a little longer to fluff up the wet ingredients). It made it amazing. Go and make this cake and be amazed at the results. You won't regret it! Original Post Below:
My DIL's mom, Anita gave me a giant zucchini. Yes, we know that the smaller ones are the ones you are supposed to pick to cook up for a delicious dinner veggie. But, if you have ever grown zucchini, they somehow have a way of hiding until finally one day there is a giant one laying there taunting you to do something with it. Anita found this particular one before it had a chance to become extraordinarily huge, but it was big enough for me to make 2 recipes out of it! Today I will share with you the first thing I made with it. It is The Best Chocolate Zucchini Cake Ever!
When Anita handed me the zucchini, she said, "Here! Make some zucchini bread!" I had every intention of doing that and taking her a loaf. But then one afternoon a couple of days later, I looked in the fridge and realized that I needed to use that zucchini and the idea of a chocolate zucchini cake came into my head. I had heard about them before but never made one. I as so glad that I did because this cake came out so moist and delicious, much better than any zucchini bread I had ever made! This particular recipe was adapted from an old church recipe compilation. It doesn't need frosting because it has a brown sugar, chocolate chip topping that is perfect!
Now, here is my secret "oops" moment that caused this cake to be so moist, I believe. I used my food processor to grate the zucchini. I accidentally left the chopping blade down in the bottom of the food processor! What I ended up with was coarsely chopped, slightly pureed zucchini. It was almost like a very thick applesauce, only zucchini. Well, I couldn't waste it, so I went ahead and made the cake anyway! It was an amazing success. I took it to our church choir practice to share it. It was a hit!
Even if you don't have a giant zucchini, you can use regular sized ones for this recipe. Later, I will give you the recipe for what I did with the rest of the zucchini!
Have you ever made a silly mistake that ended up making your recipe more delicious? Let me know in the comments!
If you don't have any zucchini at all for this recipe, here is one that Lindsey made for Memorial Day last year!
This post contains affiliate links. We will be compensated for purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support. I hope everyone is having a wonderful new year! I'm still suffering from a little bit of back to work depression. Christmas was wonderful, and it's a busy time for our family since our daughter's birthday is three days later. We threw her a Minnie Mouse birthday party for her second birthday. She was so excited. She asked me for about a week afterwards what happened to her "birpay party" and keeps pretending that she is having a party. I made her a chocolate birthday cake using my favorite chocolate cake recipe, which you can find on a box of Hershey's Cocoa Powder. Our litte one loves blueberries, so I used this blueberry filling for the middle. I made pink buttercream frosting for the outside. For the polka dots I used these Wilton's candy eyeballs. I just turned them around backwards so they looked like plain white polka dots, and nobody knew the difference. On today's post, I am going to share with you my secret to perfectly delicious buttercream frosting! You can use this recipe for all your frosting needs and adjust it with any color you want it to be, and add chocolate if you want. Your sweet treats will always taste delicious. Perfect Buttercream Frosting
**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. But, all opinions expressed are my own.
On Memorial Day, I shared with you my recipe for a The Best Ever Chocolate Zucchini Cake and the mistake I made that turned out to be a good thing. I promised to share with you what I did with the rest of the zucchini that I had left over.
This is it! I had a lot of oranges in the house because Maddy and Lindsey had both gotten some in produce coop boxes and brought them over. I used a Cara Cara orange in this recipe. I used to think that Cara Cara oranges were just a type of blood orange. I have discovered that I was incorrect in thinking that. Blood Oranges and Cara Cara have different "parentage", if you will and the Blood Orange is not as sweet as the Cara Cara. The Blood Orange has a slight raspberry flavor to it. The Cara Cara oranges are sweet and juicy! I used that reddish juice and the zest in this Zucchini Orange Bundt Cake. Yup! Time to pull out that bundt pan again! Our weather has stayed so nice this year that I am able to bake longer than usual! The flavor of this Bundt cake was vanilla with the slight orange hint coming through. The zucchini added moisture and texture to the cake. The cake was light and soft and the color was quite beautiful, with its golden color and green and orange flecks.
I decided a cream cheese soft frosting would set off the tenderness of the cake nicely. Here is the recipe:
If you try both the Chocolate Zucchini Cake, and this Zucchini Orange Cake, drop me a line and let me know which you liked the best! I have my favorite, but I won't tell right now! Check our Instagram in a few days to find out.
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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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