What I ate: Chocolate Zucchini Cake

While trying to decided which recipe to share with you today, I realized that I haven't posted anything sweet in a while. I found this to be a very surprising discovering considering how many sweets I actually eat during the run of a week. In any case, since I have been snapping photos like a mad woman every time I step in the kitchen I knew just what to share with you!

I made this cake at the end of August after a trip home to the valley where my mother gave me this monster. Needless to say, zucchini was on the menu and I needed to get creative.

I really struggled when naming this post, because after all Jack and I went through to make this cake, 
it should have been called 

"Why you shouldn't bake (or cook) while sleepy and other obvious statements".

This experiment began innocently enough.

After three days of the giant, monster zucchini mocking me from the kitchen counter 

I had finally had enough; it was time to conquer the legume.

Since time was of the essence (it was past 7pm, after all) 

we quickly logged onto food52 and scoured its pages for a worthy zucchini cake recipe, finally settling on this little ditty because it looked delicious AND we had all the ingredients.

The prep was easy. 

We melted the chocolate. 

Then we separated the egg whites from the yolks, 
mixing the yolks in accordance with the recipe and whipping the whites to be folded in later

- it adds air to the batter, making the cake lighter.
Then we accidentally added the sugar into the dry ingredients
...that's not where it goes.
This is where the trouble began.

Next, we combined the dry and wet ingredients

...only we forgot all the wet ingredients, except for the yolks.

So we mixed.

And mixed.

And thought: 

sheesh, separating the whites and yolks really did not go over well.

And while we were pondering our mistakes, 

I remembered the melted chocolate on the stove, and the oil poured in the cup. 

Silly us.

Then the mixing got easy.
Except that I tried to salvage every last bit of melted chocolate 
...and burnt my finger.

You'd think the trouble would have stopped there - it should have stopped there - but it didn't.
No sir.
I was checking the bake time when I noticed it was to be baked in a tube pan
a tube pan?
We must have a tube pan. How could we not have a tube pan?
We did not have a tube pan.
I insisted we go buy a tube pan.
It was 9pm.
We jumped in the car and headed for our Superstore.
Construction thwarted us, sending us on a long, unfortunate detour.

After a few unsuccessful stops, we had our tube pan and were back at home filling it with batter.

Luckily, our troubles ended with the purchase of our tube pan - the cake was delicious.

Notes:

Don't mix your sugar into the dry ingredients.

Don't forget the wet ingredients when combining, wet and dry ingredients.

Feel free to separate the eggs and yolks.

It won't work as well as with a cake batter without large pieces of grated zucchini,

but it still adds some air and lightness.

Don't try and salvage every last bit of chocolate. 

This cake is super chocolatey and it's not worth the pain.

Own all your pans before beginning

- OR -

check your low-level OCD at the door