Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Back in 1992, I had the opportunity to be part of the Voyageurs '92 program. Along with a dozen other youth from my community, I had a chance to see what life at the other end of our country was like.

I stayed with a lovely family in Victoria, BC. In exchange, my billet got to stay at my family's home in the West Island (in the province of Quebec). I remember learning all about BC and its wonderfully rich history and culture. The climate, flora and fauna also struck me as being totally different from what we experience in Quebec.

If I have to be honest, I'll say that what I remember most is how amazing my host family was. My billet and I quickly became good friends and had late night chats with her mom over yummy treats! Among those treats was this fabulous Chocolate Zucchini Cake! I had never ever heard of chocolate and zucchini together! It was such an odd combination!

It was the best chocolate cake I had ever had though! So moist!

Years later...Okay, let's do the math. That was Summer of '92 and it's now 2011. Many years later, I have been longing for that cake recipe. I've lost touch with my host family, but have found several chocolate zucchini cake recipes on the internet (thank  you, Google!). I've tweaked, played with, altered, incorporated, and have come up with a recipe I think is similar to the one my amazing host mother made for us back when I was 16 years old.

C's Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1/2 c cocoa powder (for baking)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 c sugar (Substitute sugar with more natural sweeteners like agave, demerara, etc)1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
*1 jar prune puree (you can use the jarred baby food one if you don't make your own from scratch)
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 c shredded zucchini

* Instead of using butter, I used prune puree. If you want to use butter, use 3/4 c at room temperature. .

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream together your wet ingredients: butter/sugar or prune puree, eggs, cinnamon and vanilla.
Add flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa, and shredded zucchini to wet mixture.
Combine all ingredients together.
In a greased Bundt pan, pour batter.
Bake for 50 minutes.
Cool in pan for 15 min (Trust me! If you take it out sooner, it will fall apart into zillions of pieces and  you'll never be able to salvage the cake! You won't have enough time to bake another for that important bake sale, bazaar, tea, fundraiser, or dinner party  you were going to bring it to!) and then cool on wire rack.

You can make a simple glaze or a chocolate ganache to add on top of the cake, but my toddler loves it just as it is...along with some homemade applesauce on the side!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Brownies

With friends and family members who have gluten allergies, coming up with a treat for all to enjoy has been a mission of mine. What's worse than going to a party and not being able to eat and enjoy what everyone else is raving about?

I have a fabulous chocolate brownie recipe (given to me by my mother-in-law), and thought I'd tweak it so that I could turn it into a flourless brownie recipe. I considered substituting my regular flour for a mix of flours that people with wheat allergies could have. I didn't make it to the health food store in time, so decided to just omit flour all together. Instead of flour, I added 3 extra eggs in hopes that they would make the brownie "fluffy".

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE BROWNIES
Ingredients:
3/4 c. butter
1/4 c. cocoa powder (for baking and not for hot chocolate!)
4 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 c. brown sugar
Icing sugar to garnish

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Cream together the butter, eggs, and brown sugar.
Combine baking cocoa and vanilla.
In a greased 9 in. baking pan, add mixture.
Bake for 40 min.
Sift icing sugar over top to garnish.

The result...

I was hoping to say, "Perfect, moist, chewy, scrumptious" brownies, but have to say that they were a little too gooey for my liking. They tasted as delicious as brownies with flour, but the extra egg and no flour made the brownies more like a souffle or even an "almost pudding"!

My brownie taste testers said 5 out of 5 stars for taste! Yay!
2 -3 stars for appearance/texture. Boo!


My first attempt at a Gluten-Free Chocolate Brownie recipe wasn't exactly a failure, but it wasn't perfect either.

Back to the drawing board.

Mick Jagger for Supper

When I was teaching in Japan, one of my students once told me that her favourite thing to eat was Mick Jagger. Later on, I discovered that her favourite dish was actually called "Nikujaga". It just sounded a lot like "Mick Jagger"!

One of my Japanese friends is visiting us on the Island for a few days. She used to be a student of mine at one of the language schools I taught at when I was in Toronto. She reminded me last night that I taught her ten years ago! I cannot believe that we have known each other for ten years! That makes me sound ancient! I was twenty-five years old when I taught her!

Since things around here have been pretty crazy these past few weeks, my friend has taken it upon herself to make our suppers for us. Having Japanese food made by my Japanese friend makes me really miss Japan!

Tonight she made miso soup and Nikujaga. I had to laugh because whenever I hear the word "nikujaga", I think of Mick Jagger! Love him, by the way!

Look at these beauties from my gardens!

These gorgeous tomatoes above turn a lovely yellow when they're ripe. They are also very sweet! They go great in tomato salads or fresh salsas. I picked the veggies in the photo below just this morning.

I added a salad to our supper menu, since we had all these veggies from our garden.

C's Everything But The Kitchen Sink Salad
1 zucchini cut into bite sizes
1 cucumber, peeled and diced
Several Roma tomatoes, diced
Several sweet yellow tomatoes, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, diced

The Yummiest Dressing Ever
Homemade maple syrup from our farm
Lemon juice
(My friend, Mrs. Bear made this simple dressing and I've been addicted to it ever since)

I basically used whatever I picked from the garden today. Add all ingredients into a bowl. Add dressing. Make sure veggies are well coated. Enjoy! Super healthy, filling, and tasty!

For dessert:
Apple Granitas
Since we have tons, and tons, and TONS of apples on our farm, I used my homemade apple sauce recipe, froze apple sauce, scraped frozen apple sauce with fork tines and served. Tasty frozen treat that is healthier for you than ice cream!

Step 1: Wash and quarter apples.

Step 2: Cook apples (make sure they're not too mushy though!)

Step 3: Press through fruit press, colander, strainer, or whatever you've got (My Korean student learned how to make apple sauce in the above photo. Here she's using some good 'ol fashioned elbow grease to press the apples through to make the sauce)

Step 4:  Add in sugar of choice and other ingredients if you like. You can totally omit this step. I like to have no sugar in my apple sauce. Some people add cinnamon. This is entirely up to  you. This stage is the apple sauce stage.

Step 5: Freeze apple sauce

 Step 6: Scrape with fork and add into serving dishes

Step 7: Garnish, serve, and enjoy!

 Like my lovely stainless steel cups I got from Orkids.ca?

Okay, I just had to add a cute pic of Little One as she was helping me pick tomatoes from the garden.

Happy Chuseok to my Korean Friends and Students

Since I teach ESL and have students from all over the world stay with us, I try to celebrate their culture and special holidays with them. Of course, they are immersed in Canadian culture, but I also think it's wonderful to celebrate their own culture. We all learn a great deal from each other.

Koreans celebrate Chuseok at this time of the year. In essence, Chuseok is the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving.

I felt a little sad that our student didn't get to spend Chuseok with her family, so I wanted to have a Chuseok celebration for her right here on Manitoulin Island. We scoured recipes online to prepare a feast. She really wanted to have kimchi buchimgae.


Kimchi Buchimgae

Ingredients:
* flour
* kimchi, cut into slivers
* egg(s), beaten
* oil
* water

The recipe in the video calls for salt, but kimchi itself is really high in salt. We just omitted it from the recipe. I don't really follow measurements (just go by taste), so I just wrote the ingredients above without the measurements. For baking, because it's a science, I follow exact measurements. For cooking, I just go by taste.

Add ingredients in a bowl and mix together. In a hot skillet or pan, add oil. Scoop batter onto skillet. Cook until golden and then flip. Cook as though you are cooking a pancake. When both sides are browned to perfection, remove from skillet and enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday: Mommy, Why Are You Crying?