A friend’s wife decided he needed to get healthy. The first step was to wean my poor friend off the ever-so-addictive sugar. This created a challenge for social events: could I make a cake that his wife and his sweet tooth would cope with?
This cake—a cake with no sugar, a little honey, and lots of zucchini and cocoa—is a sugar-free mud cake. It was our first response to the challenge.
You could argue that honey is no better than sugar, not to mention the issues around white flour. But the aim is to ease my friend into a healthier approach to life. And anyway, yellow-box honey, which we use, has a GI of round 35, so as far as sweeteners go, it’s less bad than other things we could be using.
Sure its still cake, but it’s a healthy cake on the cake scale of things.
The healthy zucchini chocolate cake
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- ¼ cup of honey
- a pinch of salt
- 1 cup of flour
- ½ cup of cocoa powder
- 1½ teaspoons of bicarb soda
- 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon of ground cardamom
- 2 cups of grated zucchini
Directions
- You can just tip everything into a large bowl, mix it well, then bake it for a bit over half an hour at 160°C (325F). But it works slightly better if you mix the wet and dry ingredients separately, then combine, as below.
- Grate the zucchini and set aside.
- Combine the wet ingredients into a large bowl.
- Combine the dry ingredients into another bowl. Sift the cocoa and flour together first to remove any lumps from the cocoa powder.
- Tip the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix well, then fold in the grated zucchini.
- Pour the mixture into a 23 centimetre (9 inch) greased cake tin.
- Bake at 160°C (325°F) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
Notes
The original recipe had a whole tablespoon of vanilla. We use the straight extract, and a whole tablespoon would be rather overpowering, so we’ve put only a teaspoon in here. It also had 2 tablespoons of applesauce, which isn’t really needed as our zucchinis are homegrown, sweet and have a lot of water in them (sometimes, we need to squeeze some water out). If your mix is dry, you can add the apple sauce back in, or some other liquid.
Source: from the Yummly website: A healthy chocolate cake with zucchini
Submitted to: Fat Tuesday, Tell ’em Tuesday
I have been looking for a zucchini cake made with honey.I Will be making this cake. 🙂
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Oh I’m so glad to be of help. I hope your lot like it as much as people do here!
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These brownies look so moist and delicious!! I’m always trying to find new ways to sneak in the veggies for my husband 🙂
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Ah yes – the sneaky veggie cook. I have to admit to being one of those when the kids were younger. Have fun with it.
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I’ve just recently realizing all of the uses for zucchini in baking! This looks perfect for sneaky in some nutrients to veggie haters. Thanks for sharing at the link up today!
xoxo K
http://peeledwellness.com
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It’s a great way to sneak in veggies. Zucchini and chocolate is a combination often used by sneaky veggie mums, even though that wasn’t the aim of this one.
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Looks good! I need a taste 🙂
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Oh yeah. It’s good. Here, have a piece right now!
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Cheers! 🙂
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Hi, I also participated with a zucchini brownie at the Fat Tuesday of April 7th and couldn’t resist to check up on yours! Looks so moist I’d like to reach across the screen. 🙂
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This was cake rather than a brownie. The cut does make it look brownie-like, doesn’t it!
Your brownies look pretty good too. (I tried to comment on your blog, but it won’t let me)
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I guess it really does! I could have anything with cocoa&zucchini every single day… 🙂
I’m sorry you couldn’t comment on my blog. If you feel like you have the time please email me what the problem was so mabye I can fix it.
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It just kept telling me that my wordpress identity wasn’t valid. I’ve had that a few times on different blogs, so it might be something your blog provider has to fix.
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Thanks for letting me know!
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This looks like a great recipe for my little boy who dislikes eating vegetables and it doesn’t contain artificial sugar either which is a bonus.
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Oh yes. It certainly works with little boys, and bigger ones too!
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Yummy!!
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