Ypsi Cooks

We were introduced to this fabulous “tomato glut sauce” last summer. It’s a great recipe to have when the tomatoes are coming with such force that you’re not sure what to do with them. (I just tallied and we’ve picked 85 pounds so far this year. And yes, we need to make more sauce.) But really, what about zucchini?

Everybody knows about having too many zucchinis (though I’m sure the accurate plural is zucchino or something), I mean, Prairie Home Companion recommends you lock your car doors at night so the neighbors don’t generously stick you with their squash. It seems most people fight a mountain of zucchini with a shredder (good plan) and bake it up into bread (another good plan). But that gets a little old, right? My mom also her’s and bags it up to freeze in appropriate quantities to make the bread winter long. To break us out of the zucchini bread rut, I offer 3 “I have too many zucchino” solutions. With so many choices, you can start accepting the insanity of zucchini that people keep trying to sneak into your car. (I’ll have a 4th idea soon… and it will help use up those tomatoes, too!)

1. Make this Zucchini, Tomato, Swiss Cheese Pie. You don’t even have to make a crust. But please, don’t skip the fennel seed. It’s what makes the pie amazing.

2. Replace 1/2 cup of milk with 1 cup of shredded, chopped zucchini in your usual pancake batter. Add 1/4 t of cinnamon. (Yes, shred and chop. It’s what stops the pancakes from being all stringy and weird.) Vegetables for breakfast. Yesssss. Very good with blueberries!

3. Make chocolate-zucchini birthday cake. Even if it’s not someones birthday. I made this a year ago for Eli’s buddy’s birthday and a neighbor just raved about it and asked me for the recipe. So I guess it was good. I’ll give you the recipe both for the decadent birthday style, and the barely sweet, non-chocolate version that I often make for breakfast. Once I forgot the sugar, so I sprinkled on an impromptu topping of chopped dried apricots, nuts and chocolate chips on top of the 9″ round. That breakfast lives in infamy. It was “fancy.”

Chocolate Zucchini Birthday Cake

Adapted beyond recognition from Carrot-Coconut Bread found in More with Less.

• 1 cup oats, blended into a flour-like consistency
• 1 3/4 cups white whole wheat flour (2 cups in the breakfast version)
• 1/3 cup good, dutch processed cocoa (none in the breakfast version)
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/4 t. baking soda
• 1 1/4 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. ginger
• 1/4 t. salt

• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2/3 cup sugar (1/3 cup in the breakfast version)
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/3 cup molasses (I use blackstrap. They tell me it’s all sorts of healthy)
• 1/3 cup apple sauce

• 12 oz shredded, chopped zucchini
• 6 oz (1 cup) chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips
• (1/2 cup rasins in the breakfast version)
• (12 cup chopped nuts, optional, in the breakfast version, though probably good in the party version, too)

Preheate the oven to 350. Grease pan(s) (2 round, bundt, 24 muffins, etc. What ever suits your fancy.) Mix the dry stuff (oats – salt) in a large bowl. Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl (eggs – applesauce). Briefly stir the wet into the dry. Stir in all the rest, until evenly distributed. Turn into pans and bake until a a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs. Bundt: ~35 min. Muffins: ~21 min. Allow to cool or the kids will burn their tongues. If you’re making one for a party, a chocolate glaze goes far. I just melt about 4 oz of good chocolate with about a tablespoon of butter and drizzle it over the cake. No one would complain about a real chocolate frosting either…

Tags: Garden, Vegetarian

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Things we Made. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.