With another Saturday and two more zucchinis from the Wilkerson CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), it is time to try making a Sourdough Zucchini Chocolate Cake. We love Wilkerson’s organic farm and delight in the large grocery bag of produce we get every week when we stop by on Saturdays to pick up our share of the CSA.
It is clearly zucchini season and I feel bad that I had not used up both of last week’s summer squash, so I called my brother Mike, who has a great chocolate zucchini cake recipe. He claims the flavor gets better and the cake stays moist as the week goes by. So my challenge this weekend is to finish this series of sourdough and zucchini three ways for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with this cake for dessert.
Martha Levie, a baker at Abigail’s Oven, puts sourdough in just about anything you can make with flour. To prove this point, when I picked up my Premium White Whole-wheat Flour from Abigail’s Oven Chris Allen gave me five recipes one of which was this:
So now the task is to figure out how much zucchini to add and what to take out of this recipe. This is what I came up with
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prep time: 25 MINUTES
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bake time: 40 MINUTES |
fermentation: 3–12 HOURS |
Ingredients
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Instructions
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Leaven
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Three hours before baking
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Combine the milk and flour in a large mixing bowl.
- Stir in the starter
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Cover and let rest at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours.
This thick batter won’t necessarily bubble, but it may expand a bit.
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For the batter
- 3 eggs, (120g)
- 14 Tbl (198g) butter (most of 2 cubes)
- 1 ½ cups (300g) sugar
- 2 tsp (10g) vanilla
- ½ tsp (3g) salt
- 2 tsp (10g) baking soda
- 1 tsp (4g) baking powder
- ½ tsp (1.32g) cinnamon
- ¾ cup (75g) dark cocoa
- 2 cups (150 g) of finely grated zucchini
- 1 ½ cups (263g) chocolate chips
- ¾ cup (95g) chopped walnuts
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Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Lightly grease and flour a large bundt pan or 9″ x 13″ pan.
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Cream the sugar, eggs, and butter.
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Add vanilla, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and cocoa.
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Mix all of the above with the levan and fold in the zucchini, chocolate chips, and walnuts (these last two ingredients are optional—but not in my cake).
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Gently stir until smooth. This will be a bit gloppy at first, but the batter will smooth out as you continue to mix it.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
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Bake the cake for 30 to 40 minutes at 350°F (177°C), until it springs back when lightly pressed in the center, and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
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- ⅔ cup (160g) heavy cream
- 1 cup (160g) chocolate chips
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- Heat cream in a saucepan over medium to low heat stirring constantly until hot.
- Add chocolate chips and stir until melted.
- Cool both ganache and cake 20 minutes before drizzling with topping.
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Tell us about ways you combine zucchini and sourdough in the comment section below.
