A delicious, rich and moist chocolate zucchini cake made even more healthy with whole wheat and applesauce. No one will guess it has vegetables in it!
I bought some zucchini the other day to use in a side of grilled vegetables, but instead I ended up ordering in, leaving the zucchini sitting in the refrigerator. I had been itching to bake a cake and decided to re-strategize and used the zucchini to make a chocolate zucchini cake instead, and I am glad I did.
I know I have been super silent here. My last post was last year July, which says a lot. From posting 2-3 times a week, to posting 8-10 times a year is a giant step down. When I started this blog, it was a place for me to share my recipes along with snippets of my life. Since a lot was happening in my life that I particularly did not want to share on a public platform, the blog mostly became a space for my recipes. When I took up photography professionally, time in the kitchen testing recipes was replaced by time tending to client work, and hence the hiatus the blog. I tried to still post 2-3 times a month but last couple of months have been super busy. I have now moved to Delhi, and between shoots and edits don’t get much time to do personal blog stuff. I keep saying I want to change that but as a freelancer its tough to say no to new job opportunities, which leaves no time for a hobby (in this case, testing recipes, writing about them on the blog). I am grateful for the opportunities that come, but I feel sad that the thing that started it all- this blog, has now become a neglected space.
I do miss my time in the kitchen experimenting, learning from failures and then rejoicing at successes. One such success is this Chocolate Zucchini Cake and since I posted it on my instagram and facebook, I have had lots of requests for the recipe. With some free time on hand, decided its high time I get myself out of the hiatus and here I am with the recipe for this Chocolate Zucchini cake.
The recipe is adapted from allrecipes.com . My variations included subbing half the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour, cutting the sugar by half, and replacing half the oil called for with apple butter. I would like to make a note of the apple butter here- it was homemade and I think it is the secret ingredient here. The apple butter recipe is a slow cooker recipe that I adapted from here. I added less sugar than the original recipe, instead I added some red wine to the apple butter, and a star anise which really did bring a nice liquorish taste to the apple sauce. You could use any homemade apple butter, or you could just use oil. If using only oil, I would suggest use a total of 1 1/4 cup. It should be enough for the recipe.
I served the chocolate zucchini cake with a drizzle of caramel sauce. The cake is seriously addictive, and it got over in no time. No one will ever be able to guess it has a vegetable in it!
I hope you get to try this chocolate zucchini cake recipe and if you do please do share your results with me on instagram or facebook or leave a comment here.
- 1 cup minus 1 tbsp all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 cup castor sugar
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 4 eggs
- ¾ cup vegetable oil
- ¾ cup applesauce
- 3 cups grated zucchini
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 350 degree F or 180 degrees C.
- Generously grease a bundt pan.
- In a bowl, sift the flours, baking soda, cinnamon baking powder, salt and cocoa together. Add the sugar, and mix it all together.
- In another bowl, add the wet ingredients- eggs, oil, applesauce, vanilla together.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix till just combined. Fold in the nuts and grated zucchini.
- Pour batter into prepared pan.
- Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
