Most people's reaction to my saying I was planning on making a chocolate zucchini cake with chocolate ganache and strawberries was "Chocolate and zucchini? Ew!" Naturally, they weren't invited. And naturally, they missed out! Chocolate and zucchini turned out to be a very happy couple, making delectable and succulent, and the chocolate chips added little chocolately explosions in the mouth; warm out of the oven the chocolate chips had lost their shape somewhat, and thus weren't so much distinct vertices of chocolate as extra little kicks of flavor. It was perfect.
Teh interwebs surprisingly have many recipes for chocolate zucchini cake, but I chose one from the Chocolate & Zucchini blog. The first thing I did was to process our handsome zucchini so I had two cups of chopped zucchini. (Ok here's the secret: you can't taste it, obviously, but the zucchini makes the cake super moist and delectable.) Set the zucchini aside, or if you're processing it the day before, put them in the fridge.
In a medium bowl, mix together 1.5 c flour, 1/2 c cocoa, 1 t baking soda, 1/2 t baking powder, and 1/2 t salt. Then, in the bowl of my new best friend, the Kitchen Aid mixer, cream together 1/2 c butter, 1 c brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp instant coffee, and 3 eggs (I used 1 whole egg and 2 whites). Take the time and mix it well after each addition (cream the butter well before adding the sugar; mix well between adding eggs). All it takes is an extra minute and the mixer does all the work. The batter should be fluffy before the eggs and speckled afterward.
Then you mix wet and dry, and while that's mixing, quickly stir 1/2 c flour and 1 c chocolate chips into the chopped/processed zucchini, and then fold this into the chocolate batter. Doing it this way really highlights just how much moisture the zucchini adds: before, the batter stuck to the paddle like stiff frosting, while afterward it was smooth and more runny. This recipe makes enough for a 10" spring form pan, but you can experiment with other shapes. Since we liked the slightly crusty edges so much, I'm considering doing it as cupcakes next to maximize the amount of edge that each serving has. I'm sure the size of your chopped zucchini pieces matters, but note that you can't really see the zucchini (click the picture to enlarge).
Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, and here you have to use the edges' pulling away, color, and texture as a measure of doneness; a toothpick never quite came out clean but burned chocolate zucchini cake would have been a tragedy, so we played it safe. The cake was a gorgeous dark brown.
When the cake is almost cool, heat half a cup of heavy cream on medium heat until it's just about to boil. Then pour over 4 oz. of really, really amazing darkish chocolate, chopped, and as it melts the chocolate, whisk everything together to form a smooth covering that requires all of your self control to not pour down your throat. I added a tbsp of butter and about 1/2 t instant coffee for added flavor, but there's lots of variation in ganache recipes, so you can't really be wrong. Let it cool until it's at a consistency you think is optimal for spreading, and pour - don't spread - over the cake. Using a spatula makes not-super-smooth lines; we had good luck carefully tilting the cake and the cooling ganache spread itself. I garnished it (very amateurishly; I blame the paring knife) with strawberries, and then we dug in.
A final word of advice: as you can see, it doesn't make a ton of cake. Your best bet is to make extra if you've got many unrelentless chocolaholics around, or you can make it for just me (I won't tell anyone ;)), and then you'll only have to make a single recipe's worth. Store it in the fridge if you've got a fruit fly problem - the last thing you want is rotten strawberries spoiling your beautiful ganache! And please send pictures if anyone makes cupcakes!!!
