The best thing about this recipe is that it IS chocolate cake, only you can eat it while thinking:
That's one serve of veggies for the day.
According to the Dietary Guidelines for Australians we should be eating 5-7 serves of vegetables per day. An average non-vegetarian diet would be lucky to include one serve of vegetables at lunch and maybe two at dinner. We often come up short.
So that's why I love any dessert that includes a vegetable. I love rhubarb desserts and ice creams, for instance. Of course, any vegetable dessert has to be qualified by "tasty".
It was quite a few years ago when I came across this recipe. I made it a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away. But I remember it being moist and yummy. I tried it again, and it was! The zucchini adds an extra moistness element, and well, chocolate is chocolate.
But beware the occasional, explicable green thing hanging out of the cake - especially if you eat your cake by tearing it with your fingers, rather than cutting.
Ingredients
(for a 25cm (10") square cake pan)
Method
Cream the butter and sugars. This is a great chance to incorporate lots of air to make the cake light and fluffy. So take your time and make sure it is really creamy, and not grainy at all.
Add the eggs. Keep beating, the more air incorporated the better. So add the eggs one at a time and keep beating until the egg is completely incorporated, and all signs of curdling are gone, before adding the next egg.
Last chance to incorporate lots of air: add the yoghurt and vanilla. It will really curdle at this point. I prefer to beat and beat until the mixture is creamy again. If you'd just rather cut to the chase with it you could add a small amount of the measured flour before you add the yoghurt.
OK, now fold in the sifted dry ingredients and the zucchini. The sifting will incorporate some air, and be careful with the folding that you don't bump out all that wonderful air incorporated from the creaming process.
Hehehehe, I hope you read the recipe before you got to this point, because you should pour the mixture into a lined pan and then into the oven at a preheated 170°C (325°F). The recipe recommended 45 minutes, but mine took well over an hour.
My latest thing is to ice with a dusting of cocoa and icing sugar. But this is a pretty chocolatey cake, so your favourite chocolate icing would work.
References:
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/nhome.htm
XWiz says: Your food based adventures are intriguing to me...