Chocolate Zucchini Cake | Full Fork Ahead

By McCarleyRHLAC

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium)
• 1 6-ounce package (about 1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Details

Servings 12
Preparation time 10mins
Cooking time 70mins
Adapted from fullforkahead.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Whisk sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until well blended, to a creamy-looking in texture. Add eggs 1 at a time, whisking well after each addition. Whisk in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each. Mix in grated zucchini, chocolate chips and nuts. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan. Invert onto a serving platter, slice and enjoy.

Notes:

Our cake actually took about an hour and ten minutes, so an extra twenty minutes than the recipe suggested. But that’s baking for you, it varies from oven to oven. Do keep a close eye on yours and adjust the time as necessary. Test your cake in several places with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean. There were certain parts of our cake that were cooked enough at 50 minutes but others were definitely not done.

As mentioned above, we contemplated doing a chocolate ganache over the top and it would be soooo good. If you’d like to, you can check out how we made the ganache layer (ingredients are just the chocolate and butter, melted together) on these Peanut Butter & Fudge Brownies. Just drizzle it over the cake and let it cool before serving.

If you’re not a frosting type person at all, go sans ganache and you’ll still have an excellent cake. Enjoy!