Chocolate Zucchini Cake « cookiecrumbstoliveby

I have decided I must redeem some part of this day…first it was my husband walking in the house, in the wee hours this morning, having been to survey the rain saturated garden before leaving for work. In his hand he carried a green club. “Oh my gosh, how in the world?!” I had scoured those plants the day prior. It was a zucchini—a huge zucchini—like the zucchini that ate Manhattan kind of zucchini.

He just shook his head. “I’m telling you I went over every inch of that garden, I have no idea where that one was hiding!!” He just shakes his head with that annoying little grin like “sure you did” kind of grin–which annoys the crap out of me…..”shirking on the job are we?”, he asks as he makes for his coffee and keys….ugghhh….

Of course he thinks it funny but I’m actually annoyed with myself. The excessive rains this summer are making for a poor poor crop—vegetables bursting before ripening due to all the water, plus you need a little sun to make things ripen and blooms to open before just rotting off the vine…so any little veggie I can pluck before it gets ruined is pretty precious. How I managed to let a zucchini get past me long enough to mature into a small mallet is beyond my soul.

I call them zucchini clubs and there is just one thing they are good for—not unless you have some cows who don’t mind being hand feed a nice tasty green club every once in a while…..our neighbor a couple of years ago kept some cows in the pasture behind our house. On the evenings I’d be out working in the garden, the cows would amble over to the fence and if I found the baseball bat zucchinis, especially if we’d been out of town for a few day with the garden getting ahead of us, I’d hold out the zucchini and they’d eat it all gone 🙂

A Chocolate Zucchini cake—that’s the answer!

Now that won’t fix my stupidity this morning for accidentally clicking the “like” button on my own post—who does that?? So Julie seems to like Julie’s post—hummmmm… No, not exactly but how do I take that back…one of those computer savvy questions no doubt. Then there was the conversation with Joanne who I referred to as Katherine—the name of her post….I know she is Joanne, and yet…my feeble brain jumps to the blog name instead—what’s up with that brain??

I blame it on the rain—I’ve had a sinus headache for the past two days—the kind that Motrin or Advil does not touch. So I wisely decided that before going to bed last night I would take half a pain pill (a whole one is just too potent) to make my head and sinuses stop hurting. Makes sense, right? These little goodies are left over from my husband’s oral surgery on a tooth…..
Maybe I was a little groggy this morning….

Anywhooooo, here is what I am offering in the way of redemption for all of you out there—those who think cookie suddenly got a little full of herself, for Joanne who thinks I’m turning into my dad, and to my husband who thinks I am no candidate for master gardener…….please find the recipe below…..

Chocolate-Zucchini Cake

2 eggs
1 ¾ cups sugar
1 cup buttermilk
½ cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 Tablespoons Coca (Hersey’s special dark for a really rich chocolaty taste)
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups flour
1 package of Instant vanilla pudding mix (I use the 3.4 oz. box)
2 cups finely grated zucchini (grate into a dishtowel and ring out the excess moisture)
1 cup mini chocolate chips (or whatever kind and type you have on hand, even white chocolate is nice)
Optional ½ to 1 cup nuts—I don’t do the nuts, as I’m not a fan of nuts in sweets….

Cream together the first 5 ingredients. Sift together the next 5 ingredients—then add to the creamed ingredients. Add pudding and zucchini, mixing well. Pour into a greased and floured (Baker’s Joy spray) 9 x 13 inch pan. Sprinkle chips and nuts on top. Bake in a preheated oven at 325° for 40-45 minutes—until a toothpick come out clean.

Serves 14-16
Perfectly easy

here it is in the pan before heading into the oven