Zucchini Cake

2 cups grated zucchini

2 cups canned crushed pineapple in own juice, drained

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 cup oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

nuts or raisins (optional)

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

 

Beat eggs.  Add sugar, oil, vanilla.  Add zucchini, flour, baking powder, salt, soda.  Stir in pineapple.  Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans.  Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.

 

I don’t remember my mom ever baking this, but it somehow feels familiar anyway.  Zucchini cake seems very Minnesotan to me.  Nobody can make a vegetable sweet and unhealthy like a Midwesterner (rhubarb pie, anyone?).  I’m not a baker, by any means.  I tend to be inexact in my calculations, which apparently doesn’t bode well for baking. 

For this recipe, I somehow neglected to have baking soda in my cupboard (like I said, I’m not a baker).  Thanks to the wonders of Google, I discovered that you can substitute baking powder for baking soda.  I ended up doing the substitution, and it seemed to work fine.  I used a can of crushed pineapple instead of measuring out 2 cups (inexact…).  I shredded the zucchini in an electric chopper (like one of those Ninja things they sell on TV), and that worked pretty slick.  I probably did it a little too long so the zucchini was more pureed than “grated.” 

So, even with substitutions and inexact measurements and mechanically shredded zucchini and a centigrade oven and a non-baker…..this recipe turned out awesome!  I had to bake it a little longer than the recipe called for (maybe an extra ten minutes).  I decided that it’s more a bread than a cake.  I think this was partly because of the loaf-shape and partly so that I could justify putting butter on my slice (Only a crazy person would put butter on cake, right?  Thank God it was bread…).  The bread is really moist (thanks to the pineapple, maybe?) and it’s not too sweet.  The recipe makes two good-sized loafs. 

We really enjoyed the smell of the bread baking and sweet goodness.   I’ll definitely make it again when I’m feeling all Midwestern and domestic and boldly inexact.  It turns out, apparently, that I like baking.  So, maybe I learned something after all.   

Tasty Rating (my rating of how good it is based on how quickly my spouse and I eat it all):  4 days  (all while sober, so that’s pretty fast)