PART III OF ZUCCHINI for BREAKFAST, LUNCH, and DESSERT

It is zucchini season in Utah and I feel pretty bad when summer squash goes to waste. You see I had not used up all 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.

Martha Levie, the chief 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, the bakery gave me five recipes one of which was a recipe for Chocolate Sourdough Cake, which I will use to adapt for this recipe.

So my challenge this weekend is to finish this series on sourdough and zucchini three ways for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with this cake for dessert. Now the task was to figure out how much zucchini to add to the mix and how much moisture to take out of this recipe.

This is what I came up with: 

Sourdough Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Serving Size:
I bundt cake
(serves 8–12)
Time:
20 min mixing,
3–12 Hours fermentation
Difficulty:
Easy

Leaven Ingredients

Directions

  1. Three hours before baking, combine the milk and flour in a large mixing bowl.
  2. Stir in the starter
  3. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours.
  4. This thick batter won’t necessarily bubble, but it may expand a bit

Cake Batter Ingredients

  • 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

Cake Batter Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Lightly grease and flour a large bundt pan or 9″ x 13″ pan. 
  2. Cream the sugar, eggs, and butter.
  3. Add vanilla, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and cocoa.
  4. 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).
  5. Gently stir until smooth. This will be a bit gloppy at first, but the batter will smooth out as you continue to mix it.
  6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and if a long fermentation is needed cover and allow to rise 8–12 hours.
  7. Either way, 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.

Ganache (Icing) Ingredients

  • ⅔ cup (160g) heavy cream
  • 1 cup (160g) chocolate chips

Ganache Directions

  1. Heat cream in a saucepan over medium to low heat stirring constantly until hot.
  2. Add chocolate chips and stir until melted.
  3. Cool both ganache and cake 20 minutes before drizzling with topping.

This cake was deliciously dark with the special dark cocoa and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I had just two slices but had to give the rest away to my daughter and family so that I would not keeping eating it (I am a recovering chocoholic).

Other sourdough and zucchini recipes we have posted include:

  1. Zucchini Latkas (vegetable pancakes) with Sourdough Starter (Part I)
  2. Savory Zucchini Sourdough Galette (Part II) 
  3. Sourdough Zucchini Chocolate Cake (Part III) see above

Tell us about ways you combine zucchini and sourdough in the comment section below.