“Anyone who wants them can take them!”

Every summer my husband’s family descends upon the Adirondacks to help with the family forest which has been in existence now for 60 years. When we are up there in the mountains, we have no television, can barely tune into a radio station, can only access email if we go into the town to little one room library, and still have a landline in the house because cell phone coverage is spotty at best. (This is why I’ve written no posts in the past few weeks!)

What we do have here, though, is a lot of farms with wonderful vegetables, and I love going weekly to the farmers’ markets they have every day of the week in a different town. After a while, however, I laugh because folks in the area begin to want to rid themselves of the abundance of vegetables they have, and people will show up at our place with huge bags of vegetables, and when you go to places like church, zucchini will be sitting on the table with a sign, “Please take!”

As such, I’m always looking for ways to use up vegetables like zucchini, and recently my son asked me if I could make a zucchini chocolate chip cake. I hadn’t made one in a long while so I needed to create a recipe. I was out of eggs so I used bananas instead, and because I never use white refined sugar, I chose to use coconut sugar.  In place of regular flour I used gluten free blends and single types, and for flavoring I simply used cinnamon and vanilla, which is all I had in the house. In place of milk I used soy milk but any type will work.

What follows is what we made, and we declared it a success since the entire cake was eaten within two meals!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups gluten free flour blend (I used a brown rice flour blend)

1/2 cup gluten free oat flour

1/2 cup sorghum flour

1 cup coconut sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

2 to 3 ripe bananas (you’ll need one cup’s worth of pureed bananas)

1 tbsp gluten free vanilla

1/2 cup safflower oil

1/2 cup soy milk (can use any type, though)

3 cups finely shredded zucchini

1 cup Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Baking Instructions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9 x 13 pan with parchment paper (or grease as you prefer).
2. Mix the GF flour blend with the the oat flour, sorghum flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. Puree the bananas so you have a cup’s worth.  Add the vanilla, oil and milk and mix well.
4. Stir in the zucchini and chocolate chips.
5. In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients with the wet, adding the vinegar.
6. Pour into the prepared pan and bake in the oven until the cake is puffed and golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Will take between 20 to 30 minutes, depending on your oven.