Chocolate Zucchini Cake

I had one, last, rather large zucchini left, so I decided to try one of these chocolate zucchini cakes everyone talks about. I wanted to find something that tasted more like cake and less like zucchini bread. I searched allrecipes.com and found what I was looking for! Here is the original recipe with a link to the source so you can simple save it to your recipe box if you have an account there.

scroll down to read my adjustments

Chocolate Zucchini Cake *

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 3 cups grated zucchini
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add the eggs and oil, mix well. Fold in the nuts and zucchini until they are evenly distributed. Pour into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool cake completely before frosting with your favorite frosting.

To start off, I did NOT reduce the sugar, as I normally do, since there was SO much cocoa in this recipe. On the other hand, the thought of that much oil scared me so I only put in 1C....and then I added one more splash, just in case. I would like to try substituting applesauce next time.

I made mine in a bundt pan. It was striking since it comes out really black!

The only other interesting thing I have to add is that I did not care for a simple vanilla buttercream glaze, as was recommended by some.

I would recommend using My Favorite Cooked Chocolate Frosting if you like a light chocolate/ dark chocolate combo, or making it in two round pans and slicing them into at least 2 layers each, then frosting with my Creamy Cool Whip Frosting, one of my summer favorites.

No matter how you decide to make it, I think you will agree, that this recipe yields one very delicious CAKE, that happens to have some zucchini in it.

Have a yummy day!

**edited to add** Darn it! I felt I had to keep eating  working on this cake, so here are the modifications I recommend in order to make it healthier:


2 C flour
2 C white sugar

(heaping) 1/2 C unsweetened cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 C vegetable oil
3-31/2 C grated zucchini


Walnuts, optional.

Tuesday Linky Parties: