My all-time favorite chocolate cake is made with zucchini. It sounds crazy, but this is my truth! I am happy to share my beloved Chocolate Zucchini Cake recipe with you, and offer details to make it the old fashioned way, and with ingredient switch-outs to make it vegan and/or gluten free.
Since posting this recipe, it has become one of my most-shared. Everyone who makes this LOVES it. This is a keeper. This joy is the whole reason why I share my recipes.
Over the last few years, I’ve worked on several attempts to re-create this childhood favorite. The single-copy we had of this recipe (kept loosely in a cookbook when I was growing up) was lost about 20 years ago. I thought I had the ingredients set for Chocolate Zucchini Cake just-about right the last time I put in a couple more trials, but that was about a year ago, and my edit notes were not clear enough to make out what the next tweak should be.
So when my kids recently mentioned this cake, I wasn’t worried about my backward-step in progress of getting this spot-on. We had a big bunch of fresh zucchini at home, and I knew it was time for me to buckle-down and make this happen. I was determined! A few more recipe tweaks later, and my job here is done. I’m passing down this gem for my sweethearts and for generations to come. We’ll be sure that this doesn’t get lost again!
So if you’re ready, let’s make this wonderful recipe, that as far as I’m concerned is a memory-maker. You can watch me put this recipe together in one-take, via YouTube.
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups grated zucchini grate by hand, or use the grating disk on a food processor
- 3 large eggs if making this recipe vegan, use egg replacement for three whole eggs
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder I use 1/4 cup Dutch Process (dark) and 1/4 cup classic/American process
- 1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 and 1/2 cups oil canola, vegetable, or avocado
- 1 and 1/2 cups flour use classic, all purpose flour or a gluten-free mix in a 1:1 ratio
- 1 and 1/2 cups chocolate chips
Instructions
- First step is to grate fresh zucchini to make two cups. If doing this by-hand, using a hand-grater, you will get a little more moisture from the fruit. If you grate using a good processor attachment, the pieces will be a little longer and the final product will have slightly less natural juices. Either way, you'll want the grated zucchini to rest out at room temperature for about 10 minutes before starting to put the recipe together.
- Next, you'll want to liberally "dust" a Bundt pan or sheet pan with your favorite spray or butter. Then use unsweetened cocoa to completely cover. Just "clank" the excess over the sink, or a bowl, to get rid of any excesses that get stuck to the bottom.
- This recipe can be put together in one bowl and mixed by-hand. You can also use a mixer, as long as you only fold-in the fruit and chocolate chips in the end. To begin, have everything set and pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
- In a bowl, place the eggs (or egg replacer for three whole eggs), sugar, cocoa (you can use a combination of 1/2 Dutch and 1/2 American unsweetened cocoa powder), pure vanilla extract, baking soda, and salt.
- Mix these ingredients until combined.
- You'll have a nice and smooth chocolate base. Have your four and oil measured and ready to mix in next.
- Take half of the flour and oil and mix.
- Mix in the rest of the flour and oil.
- Add all of the grated zucchini.
- Fold in the zucchini until totally combined.
- Add chocolate chips and fold in.
- Pour all of the cake batter into the prepared Bundt pan.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. It may need an additional 5 minutes of baking. Keep in pan until it has completely cooled.
- Once the pan and cake have cooled, you can invert the pan onto a plate. Hold the plate and the pan together firmly, and give them a couple shakes downward. The cake should come out easily and in once piece.
- Slice with a sharp knife and serve with a dusting of powdered sugar or a drizzling of chocolate ganache.
Video
I like to go old-school and part of the experience of making this recipe, is not only re-creating the proper ingredient ratios, but also the way in which it was put together – in one bowl, with a wooden spoon and everything ready to mix. This is how Mom would have done it.
Zucchini would have been prepared using a hand-grater and if my kids were helping me in these recipe trials, I would have them help by grating them by-hand, into a bowl and we’d measure the two cups afterwards.
However, to save time, I had my grated zucchini set with the help of a food processor and grating attachment, and it was done in moments. I used kitchen scissors to cut the pieces down and I allowed the fruit to sit out at room temperature while the ingredients were being prepped, so that it could rest and more natural juices would be let out. We want all of the natural moisture in the cake.
This recipe is perfectly-portioned to fit a classic Bundt pan or a sheet-pan. You’ll want to liberally dust it, for best results with the cake coming out in once piece. Using a preferred non-stick spray or softened stick of butter, and approximately 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, completely coat the pan and “clank” out the remnant so that no clumps have settled into the bottom or into the cracks of the pan.
My brother and I didn’t grow up with many baked goods around our home, since my mom didn’t bake sweets often. She would make her family-famous apple pies on special occasions, (Nonna still does!) and for an every-now-and-then treat, Mom would make us either a) Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies or b) THIS cake.
This cake was our family’s little escape from the world. When times were tough, they would feel lighter and happier when we enjoyed Chocolate Zucchini Cake together. I remember when Mom made it, we were thrilled and surprised. When I was a teenager and she was back to work full-time, it would be one of the first cakes I’d ever make on my own. The sentimental value is definitely important, but this cake, without any back-story at all, has such satisfying crumb, rich taste and texture, that is absolutely-excellent on it’s own.
The ratios of chocolate, and what the zucchini does to the entire recipe, make it a masterpiece. It’s not overly sweet, and doesn’t need much of anything else, because it’s perfect the way it is.
Sometimes my mom would dust powdered sugar on top as a special add-on. It’s a light and easy way to make the cake pretty when plating. Here’s a little dusted onto a day-old slice. This cake is just as amazing, and keeps very well, one to five days after it is baked! (You have to watch out that it’s a nice average, room temperature. Otherwise, keeping the cake in the fridge does work too.) I just put the finished cake in an old fashioned glass cake dish with glass dome-top, and my babes come to get a slice from the kitchen when they want one, and until the cake totally disappears. There is absolutely no crumb of this cake ever going to waste.
Mom’s tiny slice of a taste-test for this finalized remake of our lost recipe did receive her ‘Nonna seal of approval.’ I was very happy to have her with me on this. Without a prompt, my husband, who typically isn’t much of a cake-lover, helped himself to a slice and told me, ‘That chocolate cake is realllly good.’ And my kids are basically over the moon with this one. Their cute facial expressions and happiness about it makes me feel so good. They already know that their joy is my joy. I can’t wait to share this memory with my brother and his family too.
