In a few weeks, my husband and I are taking our first real vacation in years. I’m a gypsy at heart but pregnancy and new motherhood nipped my travel bug in the bud, y’all. We will be leaving 1 year old our daughter behind for the first time which I am somewhat sad about but we are traveling to the country where we got married and there’s no way that sippin’ on a margarita with my toes in the sand can’t temporarily fix any homesickness (or baby sickness) that could arise. Don’t you agree?
That being said, I am not quite ready to display my post baby bod on the beach yet. I’ve been working on portion control and getting in more exercise but I simply cannot control this sweet tooth of mine, especially in the evening. So my new strategy is to to just give in. Well sort of.
I started researching ways to make chocolate cake (my favorite) using some guilt-free ingredients. I noticed that there were a lot of recipes using applesauce. Perfect! I make my own applesauce every week. That’s a start! Then I stumbled upon some recipes using zucchini in chocolate cake. Applesauce and zucchini? Now we’re getting somewhere. What if I replace milk with almond milk, canola oil with coconut oil, and flour with gluten-free flour. Yikes. This can’t possibly taste good, right?
Wrong. It tastes like a heavenly chocolate cloud of deliciousness.
The recipe took some tweaking but I figured it out and you get to reap the reward. I didn’t even tell my husband that he was eating a “healthy” version of chocolate cake when I snuck the mini bundt cake into his lunch sack and he made it a point to text me and let me know it was his new favorite. Wife win!
This chocolate zucchini cake is definitely going to help me tame my sweet tooth so I can shed some more pounds before the vacay. I love it so much though, I think I’ll make it on the regular. If you try it, I bet you will too. Xo
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Yields: 6 mini bundt cakes or 12 cupcakes
- 1 ¼ cup flour (preferably gluten fee)
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (preferably coconut)
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 1 cup shredded zucchini
- ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ½ cup almond milk
- ½ cup chocolate chips (preferably dark)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Spray pan with nonstick cooking spray or use liners.
- Use a paper towel to blot and squeeze zucchini dry.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
- In an electric mixing bowl, add egg, egg white, oil, honey, and vanilla. Mix on low until smooth.
- Add in zucchini, applesauce, and almond milk and mix.
- Slowly add in dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
- Gently fold in chocolate chips.
- Bake 22-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean.
- Preparation time: 15 minutes
- Cook time: 25 minutes
- Total time: 40 minutes