Chocolate Zucchini Cake

What do you do with all that zucchini when the neighbors decide you need some of their bumper crop? Well the first thing you might do is to sauté with some onions and mushrooms for a delicious supper, but when you still have three quarters of this squash left you may want to try making something sweet.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
2 Cups Sugar
3/4 Cup Cocoa
2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
4 Eggs equivalent Egg Replacer
3/4 Cup Olive Oil
3/4 Cup Unsweetened Apple Sauce
3 Cups Grated Zucchini

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare 7" diameter spring form pan or equivalent sized cake pan by greasing lightly with olive oil. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir until well combined. Add egg replacer, oil, and applesauce and stir until well incorporated. Add zucchini and mix thoroughly. Poor mixture into prepared pan and bake 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake. Allow to cool before attempting to remove cake from pan.

This cake is super moist and can be complemented with a simple drizzle on glaze.

Chocolate glaze

3-4 Tbsp Icing Sugar
1 Tbsp Cocoa
1 Tbsp Soy Milk
1 tsp Rum Extract

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl or cup until light syrup is formed. Drizzle over top of your wonderfully delicious Zucchini Cake and enjoy.

Delicious Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Patience
Time
Lots of Jars and lids
A good knife
Peeler (optional)
Large canning pots and,
All the apples you can handle.

Begin by preheating a large canning pot with water. Take all the apples you can find and clean them up. Quarter and core each apple after peeling, (peeling optional). If you have access to a juicer, juice all the cleaned apples. Then recombine the pulp with the juice in a large pot. If you don't have the juicer place the apples in a large pot just covered in water. Boil until cooked, drain and then mash. Bring sauce to a boil over med-high heat. Place sauce into sterile caning jars, cap, and process by submerging capped jars in boiling water for 10-15 minutes. Makes as much as you've made. Enjoy.

the three cakes of birdie boy

Hi!

The Man has finally invited me over to blog on his vegan site, which I really appreciate because I've got loads to say.

Thanks, Man!

I'm going to start with a little bit of appreciation for vegan cakes. I know everyone thinks vegans are skinny and eat only brown things with no flavor, but in reality, there is endless amounts of sweet, goopy, not so healthy stuff for vegans to eat. Like cake!

We've had the opportunity to enjoy a lot of cake lately with celebrating Birdie Boy's first birthday no less than 3 times seperate occasions over a week. Once with my family, once on the day with our dayhome kids, and once with The Man's family. And it's a good thing too, because it took Birdie that long to warm up to the concept.

Here is cake numero uno. The cake wreck.

It sorta looks terrible, but it tasted great. Unfortunately, birdie got it some 2 hours past his bedtime and was not. in. the. mood.

So, cake number 2. Which was actually cupcakes. With cookies.

All good, right? Babies like animal crackers, right?

Not so much.

Onwards with the celebrations. Third time is a charm. As usual, The Man went all with the cake.

I don't know how I managed to land such a domestically skilled Man, but I'm glad I did. Because if it was up to just me, Birdie would still be crying (see cake 1 and 2, which were, I'm ashamed to say, mostly my fault).

Alright, let's see how the boy liked it.

Oh, damn, another cake. Okay, let's see how fast this one makes me cry.

Heeeeey, this isn't so bad!

Has anyone else had a go at this?

Here uncle, give it a whirl.

Yummers! Thanks dad! Now let's all agree to not let mama make my cakes anymore and it'll be all good now.

A Busy Life

Sorry I haven't written since before Christmas. Here is a recipe to tempt your pallet until I can find time to spend some additional time here. This was one of the Solstice dishes. Enjoy.

Pineapple Yams

2 med. Whole yams
2 cups pineapple juice
2 tbsp cornstarch
½ tsp salt
1 14 oz can of pineapple rings or one whole pineapple, cut
6 maraschino cherries (optional)

Bake yams in skin until tender. Peel, slice, and place in bottom of oiled casserole dish. In a small saucepan, dissolve cornstarch and salt in pineapple juice. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook until mixture turns clear. Pour the pineapple mixture evenly over the yams. Top with the pineapple rings and garnish with maraschino cherries. Bake in preheated oven at 350◦ for about 45 minutes.