The other day I was checking out The Pioneer Woman's blog where she raved about a certain zucchini cake recipe. I'd actually never cooked with zucchini and don't really know much about it. A quick trip to Wikipedia informed me that "Botanically, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower." Granted, that sounds kind of icky, but I do loves me some cake, so I figured what the heck? I won't bore you with pictures of every step of making a cake - you all know what flour and sugar look like, right? If you don't, you can find pictures here along with the recipe. It's really a very simple recipe with the most "difficult" thing being grating the zucchini. I've always been leery of graters, afraid I'm going to grate off my knuckles or the tips of my fingers or something, but no casualties today. My new grater whittled those immature fruits like it was nothing. The only change I made to the recipe was substituting pecans for coconut in the cake batter.
Also, I did not use the cream cheese frosting recipe that Ree lists. I found this recipe a few months ago that is my new favorite.
1 8 oz. package cream cheese (cold, straight from the fridge)
5 T. softened butter
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. powdered sugar
Beat cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Add vanilla. Add powdered sugar, mixing until completely blended and smooth. This recipe makes a substantial amount of frosting. Yes, I used it all. If you are one of those weirdos who doesn't like frosting, tough titties.
I frosted the cake as soon as it was cool (okay, it wasn't completely cool but I was getting impatient) and had a small piece. To be perfectly honest, my initial reaction was, "Meh." It wasn't bad, but it didn't have me wanting to dance on the rooftops either. I figured I could just take it to the office on Monday and let the pack of deranged wolves I call co-workers have at it.
Then a funny thing happened. After dinner I was cutting a few pieces for John to take to his parents and decided to try another piece.
IT WAS REALLY GOOD. Because the cream cheese frosting is so soft, I had stored the cake in the refrigerator, and the cold cake was to die for. Now, I *am* dancing on the rooftops, and because I danced and burned off a few calories - ahem - I had another piece just to make sure it really was that good.
It was.
P.S. - The cake recipe calls for crushed pineapple that has been drained. I mixed the 8 oz of reserved pineapple juice with the juice from a can of mandarin oranges I found in the pantry earlier today. To that I added some fresh lime juice and Malibu Rum. YUM.
I feel compelled to tell you that I had the 70s on 7 playing on the TV and this song came on.
More rooftop dancing ensued which caused Lola to run into the bedroom and hide under the loveseat while Ringo stuck his head under a pillow. I bet you all wish THAT was on YouTube.
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