Cake

Here is a great recipe that my wife got from the Harrowsmith cookbook. She is still tweaking it and will post her final version when done. In the meantime she says that her variation is to omit the orange rind, and add instead 1/4 - 1/2 tsp cardamom. The last cake she made, which I served at our weekly CSA pickup since it was made with zukes from our CSA Saffire Farms, she even added 1/2 cup of teff (an Etheopian grain) for the extra nutrition -- it added the teeniest little crunch, which was rather nice. She has also used up to 2.5 cups of zucchini in this recipe and it has worked fine.

The kids love this stuff - even after knowing it has so much zucchini in it. Indeed, you'd never guess. It simply tastes like a really awesome chocolate cake.

I've been pretty big into making desserts with vegetables as the late summer harvest goes into overdrive -- making a beet cake to use up those prolific, purple roots appearing in my CSA order seemed a no-brainer.

This is a recipe that I invented during my last 2 years of university. I had spent most of those 2 years trying out just about every bran muffin recipe under the sun, as I used to make a batch just about every week, then eat them through the week. I therefore have little hesitation in calling these "The Ultimate Bran Muffin" : they are extremely low in fat, relatively low in sugar, and obviously very high in fibre (both soluable and insoluable).

This recipe needs no fancy name. It’s flavour and moistness speak for themselves. This cake was a staple of childhood celebrations in my house while growing up — it makes a fabulous base for Black Forest Cake, but is also excellent with chocolate cream cheese icing and cinnamon hearts.

Of course, if I were to give it a fancy name, I’d probably call it “Triple Layer Fudge Cake”.. or something like that. ;)