Chocolate Zucchini Cake

There is no better sense of accomplishment than to build, manage, and harvest a bountiful garden.

This is our third summer attempting to care for our garden.  If you have been a  long time reader of this blog,  you’ll probably remember some of my earliest blog posts about Homegrown Experiences and our first adventure using the harvested basil from our garden to make Basil Pesto.  And, you also saw pictures of our first crude 4×5 plot of soil we affectionately coined, “Brooks Garden Variety.”

Three years later and I’m proud to say our garden has grown to two 6×8 raised beds.

Surprisingly, we haven’t lost confidence in growing our veggies and herbs even though every summer has been wrought with mistakes.  Our challenges ranged from: over watering; under watering; not pruning plants enough (or at all); not planting veggies with the right spacing; lack of sun; critters (namely deer, rabbits and bad bugs).  You name it, we’ve dealt with it.

But, the garden has been a great lesson learned for the kids (and me).  It’s taken a ton of patience and care and a lot of learning from our mishaps.  When we do get the chance to pick a ripe tomato or to pull off the plethora of ripe purple sting beans from a plant, there’s a huge amount of satisfaction that goes along with it.  To be able to create something in our kitchen that was homegrown not ten feet away is so rewarding.

The other day, we were casually tending to the garden in the late afternoon when we discovered the end of a zucchini peeking out out from beneath the gigantic elephant-ear sized leaves of the plant.  I had my son hold back the leaf so that I could further investigate and we both screamed.  We were staring at the biggest zucchini we had ever seen, anywhere!

I immediately thought perhaps it could be a contender for the Guinness Book of World Records. My son carefully removed it from the plant but needed two hands to hoist the meaty veggie up and out of the garden.  We were all amazed. Our zucchini measured 22″.   Unfortunately, I later learned that as of 2012, the largest zucchini in the world had a weight of 65 pounds. The vegetable’s length was 69.5 inches.

I was definitely skeptical of this steroid-sized veggie grown in our makeshift garden.  I did, for a brief moment, question whether we had unknowingly purchased a Monsanto seed-based plant but I remembered that I had purchased the plant from our local (reliable) organic farmer at The Green Thumb. At that very same moment, my son had started dreaming up all the recipes we could make with just one zucchini.  And, just like that, we focused on our menu:  Zucchini Parmesan, Zucchini Chips and Zucchini Chocolate Cake.

Ironically, that very same day I had purchased the July/August issue of Food Network Magazine and there were two pages of zucchini-based recipes.  The Chocolate Zucchini Cake seemed intriguing and I thought, a la Jessica Seinfeld, what a great way to get in a nice serving of veggies (although, we weren’t sneaking it in).

Once you peruse the recipe you’ll realize that this cake is very basic and all of the ingredients should be in your stocked pantry.  There are no surprises.  We whipped up the cake in less than 15 minutes and in another 35 minutes it was done.

After spreading the glaze over top the cooled cake, we eagerly cut our pieces and indulged.

I loved the consistency — it was moist but dense– kind of like a spice cake.

My son was a bit disappointed that the chocolate taste overpowered the zucchini flavor but, when he let the piece linger in his mouth, he smiled as he tasted hints of his beloved homegrown veggie.

Enjoy.