Chocolate Zucchini Bread

This chocolate zucchini bread is awesome for a few reasons: it tastes like cake, it’s actually pretty healthy (because it uses applesauce rather than oil), and it uses up 2 full cups of shredded zucchini.  Oh yeah, and it has chocolate chips in it!
I first made this when my neighbor handed me a zucchini the size of a baby’s arm.  I had run out of oil, so I was excited to come across a recipe that used applesauce instead of oil.  I’m not usually into calorie-cutting measures in my baked goods but I thought I’d give it a shot.  Healthy zucchini bread is better than no zucchini bread at all, right?

I’m so glad I gave this recipe a chance.  It’s seriously delicious!  Tender and moist, tastes like cake (second time I’ve said that, I know), studded with chocolate chips, and with a hint of cinnamon.   I had to make it two times to use up my baby-arm zucchini, which is how we managed to take pictures of it to share with you!


Have you noticed we’ve been bad bloggers? Sorry about that.  Remember Colorado Crafted?  It’s been keeping us very busy, but we’re not complaining!  Oh and remember those crazy floods that hit Colorado?  Yeah, those happened in our town.  We live in Longmont (the northern part of Boulder County) and so our city was hit pretty hard. 
Luckily Dulcie & I both live on a hill so our houses were safe.  People were evacuated literally blocks away from us, but we were both just fine.  So many things (our favorite bike trails along the river, the bridge we use to get everywhere, and so many local businesses) were destroyed, but we were very fortunate.  If you’re looking for a way to help out, go check out Colorado Crafted – we’re donating half of our proceeds to flood relief through the end of the month.  Send a box to someone who might need a boost, or remind someone about the best side of our state!
Now, on to the recipe!

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

• 1 cup applesauce
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup wheat flour
• 3 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa
• 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 cups shredded zucchini
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350.
Combine applesauce, eggs, and sugar in a large mixing bowl.  Stir well to combine.
Dump in all the dry ingredients, then mix again.
Lastly, stir in the shredded zucchini and chocolate chips.  Pour into a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan and bake at 350 for 65-70 minutes.  Let cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from pan.

The Best Coffeecake You’ll Ever Have

Hey guys, we’re excited to announce that our recipe for our very favorite Coffeecake is being featured over on Cup of Jo today!  Go check it out, here’s the link. 

Hint: the cake is almond scented and studded with raspberries. Mmmm!

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Pumpkin muffins loaded with warm autumn spices and a delicious cream cheese center.  The epitome of fall! The type of recipe you make yourself and realize tastes much better than the coffee shop version! Behold:

This is another of those classic autumn recipes that we have seen making the rounds on Pinterest, so we pounced on the very first cool weather day to make these beauties.  We found lots of very similar versions of this recipe online (Annie’s Eats and See Brooke Cook to name two).  Let me tell you about how we’ve simplified them, just for discussion’s sake.

First of all, most recipes call for you to form the sweetened cream cheese into a log, wrap it in plastic, freeze it, then slice off medallions to plop into the center of the muffins.  The honest reason we didn’t do this is because we were too far along when we actually read this part of the recipe.  Oops, totally my fault.  I am the non-meticulous one.  We were so sad, thinking that our muffins would be a mess when they came out of the oven.  But they weren’t – the filling didn’t melt away and it all turned out quite beautifully. Whew!

Next, most recipes called for the inclusion of both “pumpkin pie spice” as well as most of the individual components of pumpkin pie spice. We found this confusing and also we don’t keep pumpkin pie spice on hand, so we broke the spice mixture down into its basic parts (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and clove).  This is nice and flexible – feel free to ad lib here; it will be OK if you leave a few out as long as you keep the cinnamon.

The other thing we did was reduce the sugar and oil in this recipe.  Now – you know us, and it wasn’t for health reasons but instead for taste reasons.  Many comments on the original recipes said the muffins were overly oily, so we reduced it a smidge. Then we started thinking that 1/2 cup sugar combined with 4 oz cream cheese would result in an uber-sweet filling, so we chopped the sugar amount in half. Last but not least, 1 cup of sugar in a recipe for 12 muffins seemed like a lot, so we reduced that to 3/4 cup and were very happy with the results.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Yield 12 muffins

Cream Cheese Filling

• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1/4 cup sugar

Whip together cream cheese and sugar very well.  We’ve done this with a fork, a hand mixer, and a food processor – anything works.  When it is all combined, pop it back in the fridge to stay cold while you prep the rest of the muffins.  Having this mixture as cool as possible will prevent the cream from melting away too much during baking.  The results in the picture were created with the cream mixture left at room temperature, though, so don’t worry too much about this cooling step!

Muffins

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

Our own version of “Pumpkin Pie Spices”; feel free to ad lib a little based on what you have on hand.  Nothing is essential other than the cinnamon.

• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cloves

Mix the sugar, oil, pumpkin, and eggs together very well in a large mixing bowl.  Then plop the flour, baking soda, and pumpkin pie spices on top of this blended wet mixture.  Stir well to incorporate and fully mix everything together. 

Line muffin tins with paper cups, or lightly oil them. Spoon about 1-2 Tablespoons of batter into the bottom of each muffin.  We used a regular dinner spoon – heaping – to do this.  Make sure this batter is spread thinly and evenly across the bottom of each muffin tin.  I whacked mine flat on the counter a few times to accomplish this.

Next, distribute a spoonful (approx 1 Tablespoon) of the cream cheese filling in each.

Finally, evenly distribute the remainder of the batter over the top of the cream cheese.  Approx 2-3 Tablespoons each is what we came out with.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.  Let cool before you eat them, unless you are ready to deal with molten cream cheese!

Lemon Yogurt Cake

It’s amazing how much flavor a healthy dose of lemon zest can contribute. This cake has a brown crisp top, then inside it’s dense and lemony. I personally recommend eating a slice as soon as you pull it out of the oven so you can enjoy the lemony steam this cake creates!

We’ve really been getting our money’s worth from the latest Bon Appetit magazine. The Agave Margaritas were a big success and then we moved right along to this delicious cake. It’s a classic French recipe; the magazine says that it is one of the first recipes French mothers teach to their children. And so I have to assume that everyone in France has this delicious cake recipe memorized. Right? Either way, it’s a great classic recipe.

The lemon zest is added to the sugar, then the two are rubbed together until the oils in the lemon are evenly distributed and the sugar becomes clumpy and moist. The cake comes out of the oven with a shiny brown top, and as you slice it open you’ll release a burst of lemony steam. Enjoy!

Lemon Yogurt Cake

recipe by Bon Appetit

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

1 Tbsp lemon zest

3/4 cup whole milk Greek yogurt

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350.  Grease & flour an 8 1/2” loaf pan.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
Combine lemon zest and sugar in a large bowl, and rub the two together with your fingers until the sugar is moist. Add yogurt, oil, eggs, and vanilla – stir to combine completely.
Fold dry ingredients into wet and stir gently until  just to combined.
Pour batter into pan, smooth top, and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes before cutting.

Mixed Berry Buckle

This easy coffee-cake style buckle is made with simple ingredients you probably already have on hand (sugar, butter, flour, the usual). The genius of making this buckle during the snowy days of winter is that it uses frozen mixed berries, which are pretty much the only non-citrus that’s easy to have around this time of the year!

I made this the other day to brighten up a snowbound morning in Colorado. The snow was falling like crazy, I had all the ingredients on hand, and in the end I felt happy and cozy on my couch, looking out the window, while eating my cake with my friend. (vs cold and annoyed with the snow.) A win!

It’s a major win with toddlers, too.  Our photo shoot was a little challenging this time, what with people pulling on pant legs and reaching their ever-lengthening arms across the table with chubby fingers grasping while saying things like: Oooooh – what’s this? Cake!!! More cake? More Cake?!!



Thanks to the always dependable Simply Recipes for this recipe inspiration.

Mixed Berry Buckle

Cake ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 c (1/2 stick) softened butter
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 c milk
• 2 c frozen mixed berries

Topping ingredients:

• 1/4 c softened butter
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/3 c all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease an 8-inch round cake pan.
Combine the 2 cups of flour, the baking powder and the salt. Then, in separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients a little at a time, alternating with the milk to avoid poufs of flour in your face. Stir the frozen berries in by hand, evenly distributing them. Pour batter into pan.
Combine topping ingredients, mashing with a fork to create a crumbly mixture.  Sprinkle this over the batter in the cake pan.
Bake for 60 minutes at 375.

Almond Cake with Caramelized Clementines

This is a great wintery cake – very rich, buttery, almond-scented, and simple.  We topped it with tart clementine segments that had been quickly caramelized.  The combo is delicious – an excellent case of the sum being greater than its simple parts. 

We hit on this dessert after discovering a large portion of our homemade almond paste in Dulcie’s freezer.  The cake is based on an Alice Water’s recipe in this cookbook.  It’s very similar to a pound cake due to the large quantity of butter and eggs, and then the almond paste lends its signature warm and nutty flavor.

The caramelized clementines are inspired by a Martha Stewart recipe – we subbed in the cute and seasonal clementines for her suggested navel oranges.

Almond Cake

• 1 cup flour
  
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/4 tsp salt
  
• 7 oz almond paste (a scant 1 cup)
  
• 1 1/4 c sugar
  
• 2 1/2 sticks butter (1/2 lb + 4 Tbsp)
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 6 eggs

Butter a 9-inch round cake pan thoroughly and line the bottom with parchment.  This cake tends to stick, so don’t skip the parchment step! Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a food processor (or in another large mixing bowl if you’re up for a workout) whip the almond paste & sugar together until it’s in very fine pieces. Next, add the butter and beat it together with the almond paste and sugar until it is light and fluffy.  Beat in the vanilla, then the eggs.  Finally, add the dry ingredients in to the wet, bit by bit, until fully combined. Bake at 325 for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Let cool completely before turning out and slicing.

Caramelized Clementines

• 4 peeled clementines, pulled in half then cut into thin half-moons

• 2 more clementines, juiced

• 1/2 cup sugar

Dissolve the juice and sugar in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer, then stir occasionally until the sauce reaches a golden caramelized color. Add the clementine half-moons and sauté until they’re coated in the caramelly glaze.  Remove them to a serving dish, then spoon the warm sauce over slices of almond cake.