Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

Posted August 31, 2009

Find more about cake , zucchini , cupcakes , dalai mama , dessert

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Zuketastic! Delisquash!

I use a box grater for the zukes: the food processor is quicker, but the shreds are kind of big and disinclined to melt moistly into the cupcakes.

I would have taken pictures of the children helping, except they got invited to a friend's swimming pool and were running out the door in a blur before I could say, "Don't you even want to measure the baking soda?" Poor lonely baking me.

The view, before baking. When I use cupcake papers, I put the muffin tins away without washing them! I know. I'm a wild thing.

Back from swimming just in time to get a weird, feral look on her face and eat a cupcake.

I was one of those kids who chewed up cupcake wrappers and then spat them out in revolting wads. Ben just daintily bites the crumbs from their edges.

Doesn't it look kind of promisingly like brownies? This is not a false promise.

With powdered sugar. Elegant, no?

Breakfast. If anything, the cake was even *moister* today. So, so delicious.

The first time my mother baked a zucchini bread--this was way back in the Pleistocene era of striped bell bottoms, smocked tunics, and Andy Gibb's "Love Is Thicker Than Water"--we all thought it was wildly exotic. It was even crazier than banana bread, which was already pretty crazy. "I can hardly even taste the zucchini!" we said, and shook our heads in amazement. "It just tastes like cake! Like good cake, even!"

I feel that way about these cupcakes. They taste just like chocolate cupcakes! Like good chocolate cupcakes, even! They're super-chocolatey and almost obscenely moist--like the cake mix with the pudding in it, in a good way. Plus, it's a great way to use up a glut of squash--and the green flecked against the rich, reddish brown of the cake frankly delights me. "We're not trying to get away with anything here," they seem to be saying, these flecks, and I agree.

Sometimes I wonder if we don't give kids enough credit for their own desire to be healthy eaters, you know what I mean? Ben always leafs through the family magazines that arrive in the mail, and he hates nothing more than the ads promising, "Your kids will like it because they won't know it's actually good for them--they'll just think it's a deep-fried cotton candy sno-cone!" "Do they think we won't like it if we know it's good for us?" he asks, rhetorically, then adds, offended, "That offends me." Believe me, my children would be first in line for a deep-fried cotton candy sno-cone. They love candy and junk food: they love to eat it and talk about it and save it forever, and they will likely end up on that reality show Hoarders with their stashes of ancient, carefully curated trick-or-treat relics. But they're also proud and happy about eating healthy foods when healthy foods are what they're eating: Birdy's a little bit in love with herself, when she stands in front of the cherry tomato vines, cramming handfuls of Sungolds into her happy mouth; Ben is excited to be a person who might order a salad in a café. Can't these little ones, glucose-addled as they may be, appreciate good nutrition without demeaning their great and powerful attachment to sugar and grease? I think so.

But then again, I am not inclined to puree a tablespoon of butternut squash into their every glass of chocolate milk or hide white beans in their hamburgers like some kind of demented, nutritious Easter egg hunt. Vegetables tend to be somewhat undisguised around here--not always, but usually. Of course, if they would not deign to put a frank apricot or spinach leaf into their toothless scurvy-ridden mouths, I might feel different about this--and you are probably thinking that right now, if you're spooning zucchini sno-cones into your own children's toothless, scurvy-ridden mouths. We all do what we have to. I'm just saying, maybe your kids will actually be glad to know there's zucchini in their festive, chocolatey back-to-school cupcakes. Or maybe they won't.

Because, truth be told, when I was asking the kids about the cupcakes, Ben ranted and raved about their supreme deliciousness, but Birdy hesitated before announcing that she actually thought they needed a bit of frosting. "Especially because of the zucchini," she added. "What do you mean, 'because of the zucchini'?" I asked, only slightly petulant. "I don't know," she sighed. "I could see it, and I just didn't really like knowing it was in there. I think frosting would have at least distracted me from it." Well! But later, when we were devouring the cake with friends, I teased her for having a second piece, and she shrugged, this contradiction of a girl with her chocolate-ringed mouth, and said, "It's actually really good. I actually really love it." So there you go.

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes
Active time: 20 minutes; total time 50 minutes
Makes 2 dozen cupcakes, or 12 cupcakes and 1 8-inch cake

This recipe is kind of a cross between a Heidi Swanson cupcake recipe and a Bon Appetit cake recipe, with a few deviations, as is my way. Feel free to omit the spices, although I love the flavor combination--just don't cut back on the vanilla or the salt, which the cake really needs in its successful fight against blandness.

Ingredients:
2 cups brown sugar 
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs 
2 teaspoons vanilla 
1/2 cup buttermilk 
2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini  (around 2 medium zukes)
1 cup chocolate chips  (I used milk chocolate, to the horror of my life partner who likes his chips dark, dark, dark)
2 cups flour 
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
2 teaspoons baking soda 
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted at 350 for 5 minutes (optional, of course)
Powdered sugar for topping (also optional)

Heat the oven to 350, and line 2 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners. Or line only one muffin tin, and grease and flour an 8-inch cake pan.

In one bowl, mix together the sugar, butter and oil. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each. Stir in the vanilla, buttermilk, zucchini, and chocolate chips. In another bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients, except the walnuts. Pour the wets into the dries, and mix well until combined, adding the walnuts at some point, around halfway through the mixing. You don't want to over-mix the batter, but you don't want to leave hidden pockets of flour either.

Now scoop the batter into the cupcake liners, filling each one about 3/4 of the way, then scrape the rest of it into the prepared cake pan, if you're making a cake too. Pop the pans in the center of the oven and set a timer for 25 minutes. When it rings, check the cupcakes: your want them just set, with no jiggliness on top, true, but also without an excess of bakedness--they'll continue to bake a bit as they cool, and you really want these moist; a toothpick should come out with some damp crumbs clinging to it. If they need another minute or two, give it to them. Check the cake at 30 minutes--mine took 33 minutes for perfect, moist doneness.

Cool on a rack and, if you like, sift powdered sugar over them before serving.

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Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

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picsmamma says:

October 26, 2009

My daughter and I (finally) made these cupcakes last night. She thought the cloves smelled "weird" but I added them anyhow. I reserved the walnuts for the cake only, not the cupcakes (my daughter opted out of the walnuts). We both loved these and I'm actually thinking of eating another one right now.

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ELN5 says:

October 05, 2009

Delicious! I used the cuisinart to grate the zucchini and the zucchini still disappeared into the muffins completely. These were a big hit with my kids and a bit less fat than my other chocolate zucchini cake recipe. I skipped the cloves and walnuts.

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Angela_Berg says:

September 24, 2009

Hi Catherine, it was good cake! And the muffins were fine. But I think perhaps I didn't cook the bigger cake for long enough?? Then I left it on the counter for a couple of days before we started it - tasted great - but the two of us who ate it didn't feel so great after!!! I've seen a couple of similar recipes which recommended storing in the fridge. Probably not a bad idea if you are feeling unlucky (and think the cake will be around long enough to matter!)?

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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

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