Zucchini Cake

I have one Black zucchini plant in the garden.  So far it has produced 7.7kg of normal sized zucchini plus a few giants that I didn’t bother weighing as they went straight into the compost.

Now, as much as I enjoy zucchini the rest of my household are pretty ambivalent about it (actually that’s putting it nicely – refuse to eat it comes closer).  So rather than eat 7.7kg of the stuff myself I have taken to disguising it.  What better way to disguise a vegetable than to call it cake?

I’m not the first person to write on the topic of zucchini cake this week.  Garden Glut made one  and wrote about it for her “Zucchini Tuesday” series post.  Whilst my recipe is going to be pretty similar to hers it does differ in one respect – it uses oil rather than butter because unlike her I prefer the texture oil brings to a cake.  This recipe is based on a basic tea style cake recipe but adapted to use as much zucchini as possible as well as adding some dried fruit and nuts to keep things interesting.

Zucchini Cake

• 2 eggs beaten
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup self raising wholemeal flour
• 2/3 cup oil (I used a mellow olive oil)
• a few drops vanilla essence
• a pinch salt
• 3 cups grated zucchini
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tsps cinnamon
• 1 cups pistachios chopped (or any nuts, walnuts or pecans would be work very well)
• 1 cup dried fruit ( I used dried cranberries but sultanas or dried apricot would also be good.)

Make a batter by combining the flour, eggs and oil.  Add the sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.  Mix through the zucchini, nuts and dried fruit.

This mixture will make one very large cake or two loaf sized cakes.  If making loaves bake for 55 minutes at 175C.

I really enjoyed the cake, (its cake so who wouldn’t really)  and I think the same mixture would make really good muffins.  I’ll have the kids eating zucchini yet!

Today is the first Garden Gobble Thursday hosted by VeggieGobbler.  This is my contribution to it.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what others have harvested and cooked.