I first read about this cake in the New Zealand gardener “garden diary 2010”. Christchurch gardener Andrea Hawkes had one of her favourite seasonal chocolate cake recipes featured in it with grated courgette. It sounded interesting and such a great way to use up what is always a ridiculously large crop. My sister made it last year and I vowed to convert it to gluten-free so I too could eat it. Here I have also cut the sugar content by a third, with no noticeable difference in flavour or texture, so now the cake could almost be called a health food… if it weren’t for all that chocolate on top!
chocolate courgette cake recipe
This cake does contain butter and yoghurt as we now tolerate these. But if you are strictly dairy-free, try substituting dairy-free margarine and soy yoghurt. Also make sure your chocolate is dairy-free. (Most good quality dark chocolates are) If you eat wheat, you can simply use 2 1/2 cups plain wheat flour in place of the almond meal, brown rice and potato flours. Serves 12.
125g butter, softened
1 cup (200g) light muscovado sugar (or use soft brown sugar)
3 eggs
3/4 cup (75g) ground almonds (almond meal)
1 teaspoon natural vanilla essence
1/2 cup (120g) natural plain yoghurt
1 1/4 cup (150g) brown rice flour
1/2 cup (75g) potato starch (known as potato flour in NZ)
1/4 cup (40g) cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 cups (375g) grated courgette (zucchini)
100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
Preheat oven to 170 C/ 338 F. Grease and line a 9 inch/22cm spring form cake tin.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time beating well between additions. Add vanilla, yoghurt and ground almonds and mix well. Sift the dry ingredients and mix in with the grated courgette. Spoon into greased tin and sprinkle with the chopped chocolate. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the centre feels firm and a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely. Serve as is, or ice with chocolate icing.
15 Responses
This looks amazing! Am bookmarking this to make as soon as I can get my hands on zucchini!
Looks gorgeous! I've been trying to use up excess zucchini from my many prolific plants, and this is a good idea, I will have to try. 🙂
I was just thinking that little bits of chocolate throughout the cake would be a nice little surprise and then you mentioned it! 🙂
Thanks so much for posting and introducing me to New Zealand food! I absolutely am going to follow your blog, and I'm going to share it with others in my program. I know several of us are hoping to find alternative food options, especially veggie, and I can already tell this blog is going to be a great resource! Thanks. 🙂 Now I am even more excited about your country.
Your welcome Rebecca. I hope you enjoy your time here in NZ. 🙂
MMMMMMM,..I already love a good gf corurgettes ( zucchini ) cake & to combine that with real chocolate must be so awesomely tasty & it looks pretty too!
yum – my friend makes me a gluten free chocolate zucchini cake and it's so lovely and moist, almost like a chocolate zucchini carrot cake. ell the best for your move!
Thanks Jas. I might be in touch asking where you find all your gluten-free flours in Perth 🙂
mmm looks delish, my son is allerguc to milk protein, soy and eggs, is there substitutes I could use to make this cake? Like Gold n Canola marg (for butter) and egg????
Hi there, I have made some suggestions to make this cake dairy-free up above the recipe in the headnotes, I tend to use olivani for a dairy-free butter substitute. As far as the eggs go, I'm not sure. I haven't done a whole lot of egg-free baking before.
This is what http://www.livingwithout.com/ suggests
Replace 1 large egg with one of the following:
* 3 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce (or other fruit puree) + 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 tablespoon flax meal, chia seed or salba seed + 3 tablespoons hot water. (Let stand, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes or until thick. Use without straining.)
* Egg Replacer, according to package directions
* 4 tablespoons pureed silken tofu + 1 teaspoon baking powder
Replacing more than two eggs will change the integrity of a recipe. For recipes that call for a lot of eggs, like a quiche, use pureed silken tofu. Because egg substitutions add moisture, you may have to increase baking times slightly.
Note: To replace one egg white, dissolve 1 tablespoon plain agar powder into 1 tablespoon water. Beat, chill for 15 minutes and beat
again.
Hope that helps -emm
This is really delicious. I found it via pinterest on a search for something for dinner based on courgettes as they were what I had most of in the fridge! Turned out that dessert was the item featuring courgette. I halved the ingredients as I didn't want to have it go to waste, or more likely eat 10 portions myself!! I was too impatient to wait for it to properly cool, so ate it while still warm. Delicious and moist enough to not require any icing, cream or ice cream. DH does not require GF and can be a bit creeped out by vegetables in cakes etc but he also declared it delicious!
Thanks for sharing the recipe, I shall look forward to trying some more of yours.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it 🙂 It's always a bonus when the gluten-eating hubby loves it too!
I made this yesterday and it was great. I was trying to squeeze too many things into my day, and I made the mistake of making it too close to when I had to leave the house for a hair appointment. It took longer to make than I expected, and then it took longer to cook as well (my slow oven). I had to take it out before it was ready, so it was a bit moist and crumbly (I was also 10 minutes late to my hair appointment). But everyone still raved about the cake, and no one picked out it had courgette in it. I stirred the chocolate chunks through, and iced with a very thin layer of chocolate icing.
Do you drain/squeeze out the excess moisture from the zucchini?
No, just grate it and add as is x