Permaculture in Action

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Zucchini Glut

What do you do with a glut of zucchini? We are averaging 4Kg a day of zucchini. Most of them go into our CSA boxes, but it still leaves us with lots. We add them to just about every meal. They have been an ingredient in our evening meal for the last 4 nights- vegetable stack with paneer, paneer with vegetable sauce, curry, and tonight vegetable rissotto.
This afternoon, while going through my recipe book looking for another use for zucchini I came across a chocolate zucchini cake recipe scribbled on a piece of paper and thought I'd give it a go. Normally when I write a recipe down I note where I've got it from. I didn't do it with this one and I can't remember where it came from, so if any of you out there reading this recognise it please let me know so that I can link it back from whence it came.

Ingredients.
1/2 cup butter
11/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tspn. vanilla
1/2 cup milk
21/2 cups SR flour
4 Tblspns. cocoa
1 tsp. bicarb soda
1/2 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn. salt
2 cups grated zucchini

Method
Cream butter and sugar
Beat in eggs
Add milk and vanilla
Add sifted dry ingredients
Stir in zucchini
Pour into 23cm x 30cm tin
Bake at 160 c for 40- 45 mins,

Delicious.....



It certainly will be one of our regulars over summer while ever the zucchini glut is on!

10 comments:

  1. Oh, I'm hearing you! I can't say I'm picking 4kg, but I am having to be a bit creative.

    Maybe I can make my soon to be 2 year old's birthday cake with this recipe... is that mean?

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  2. I love zuchinnis. I have fond memories of doing vegetable picking while backpacking. It wasn't fun to pick them but they gave my 2-minute noodles (all I could afford to eat) good flavour.

    My favourite recipe is simple:
    Zuchinnis, tomatoes, onions, and chilli cooked in a saucepan (no need for water as there is plenty from the veges)...yum yum yum

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  3. Oh yum! I love a home grown zuke and sadly the growing season is fairly short here in Tassie. Long enough to have a good lash at them but not long enough to eat more than you need..... until I get my polytunnel up and running! Can't wait !!!

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  4. I love zucchini any way it's prepared. This past summer we ate quite a bit in chocolate cupcakes. I also like it in bread, or grated and mixed in fried rice.
    I am curious, what is a glut? That is not a term I have heard before. :)
    xx

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  5. Hi Tracey, a glut is an over abundance.

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  6. The kids and I make this cake at zuchinni time too, Kate...it is delicious. I can't remember where I got mine either now as I have been baking it for years. Hopefully we will have a harvest like yours soon, I am just thinking about that cake now.

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  7. The cake is delicious and would be perfect for birthday cake I think!

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  8. I have a handwritten recipe in my folder called "Wwoofer's Zuke Bread", given to me by a wwoofer years ago. It's not really a bread - very definitely a cake in my terms, but the kind of cake you can eat every day and put in a kid's lunch box without feeling guilty. And I've morphed it a little. The basic recipe is here. One of the things I like about it is that it's a mix-it-up-and-bake recipe - no creaming or beating. My other favourite thing to do with a zucchini glut is Lebanese Marinated Zucchini. I keep a jar going in the fridge all summer and we have it on sandwiches and as a side. And, lately, I've been managing to use a zucchini or two for breakfast in zucchini and feta patties - basically grated zucchini, grated feta, eggs, bit of basil, garlic and chili, just enough flour to make a fritter type batter and shallow fry. Very yum. And then, when all else fails, the chooks get to live on zucchini for a while.

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  9. Thanks Linda for all those wonderful ideas and the recipe. Mark also made zucchini fritters for breakfast this morning. I wonder if we will have zucchini for every meal!

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  10. Thanks Kate for the cake recipe. I am sitting at the table looking at a basket of zucchini's wondering what I was going to do with them!!

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