Choco zuke cake with shiny dark choco boiled frosting is totally ridiculous! (Suzi Thayer photo)
OK, this is the last time I’m going to mention lobster this summer. I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it. I’m sick of talking about it. Unfortunately, for you, I’m not sick of eating it.
I got 10 lobsters down at Sammy Olson’s wharf in Cushing last weekend. I’ve told you about the wharf, and that Sammy is Christina Olson’s grandnephew. I have to go by the Olson House (“Christina’s World”) to get to the wharf. This time I stopped and played tourist. I took a pic of the window where Christina used to sit when I sat on her steps and visited with her.
She didn’t look like the idyllic image of the woman in the pretty pink dress Andrew Wyeth painted. Nothing against the painting, or Andrew Wyeth. He was awesome.
Anyway.
As my friend Kathy Lizotte says, you can never have enough lobster (or chocolate). (Suzi Thayer photo)
I got the lobs, and my uncle Gary murdered them in our outside cooker, while I made Manhattans and poured wine for other relatives, and we sat on the front porch at the cottage and waited for the lobsters to die. Ugh.
My cousin Christienne and her husband, Tom, and their little girls, Gwendolyn and Juliet, were visiting from England. They live in the small town where Tom grew up – Shrewsbury, in Shropshire. It sounds much better when they say “Shrewsbury in Shropshire” than when I try to say it.
Christienne and Tom had their first Manhattans ever, and opted for seconds 🙂 while Gwen and Juliet sipped their cocktails of seltzer with cherry juice, a cherry and a raspberry. Gwen guzzled her first. I told her to sip the second, as it was, after all, a cocktail.
Juliet tells Gwen she’s had enough to drink. (Suzi Thayer photo)
Yikes. This is really starting to sound like a column (insert trepidatious emoticon.)
Sorry.
So, food.
I had made a chocolate zucchini cake earlier. I wrote about choco zuke cake a while ago, in another newspaper, so some of you will be like, “Ugh. Great. THIS again.” But bear with me. Why? I don’t know. I just want you to. We all need reminders now and then, and this is the Best. Cake. Ever.
So you’re going to get the recipe, along with my mother’s recipe for chocolate boiled frosting. That, on the choco zuke cake, is beyond ridiculous.
The cake is moist (sorry if that word grosses you out), light, and fluffy. And so, so chocolaty. Whoever came up with the idea to throw zucchini into a chocolate cake must have been high on something, but it works. It works very well.
And the zucchini makes it healthy. Just kidding.
There’s really nothing healthy about chocolate zucchini cake. It is laden with butter, oil, and sugar. But if you have a Manhattan before eating it, you won’t care.
Most of us had a couple Manhattans that night. Don’t worry – everyone walked home. That’s one of the beauties of my family’s 100-year-old cottage. My great-grandfather owned a large chunk of land along the St. George River, and several relatives have cottages nearby. As my mother used to say, we wander ovah, from cottage to cottage. It’s just like the Kennedy compound on Martha’s Vineyard, only not quite as fancy. OK, nowhere near as fancy, but it’s ours.
I took a pic of the window where Christina used to sit when I sat on her steps and visited with her. (Suzi Thayer photo)
So after the Manhattans, we sat down to the murdered lobsters, with melted butter; some good, crusty bread; corn on the cob from Spear Farms, a sweet yellow tomato salad made by the lobster killer, and for dessert? You guessed it. Choco zuke cake.
Here’s the recipe:
Blend 1 stick butter or margarine, ½ cup oil, 1 ½ cups sugar; beat in 2 eggs. Combine with 1 tsp. vanilla and ½ cup buttermilk (just add a couple teaspoons vinegar to milk). Blend, or sift together, 2 ½ cups flour, 1 tsp. baking soda, ½ tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. salt, 4 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa, 1 tsp. cinnamon. Blend all together. Stir in 2 cups grated zucchini. Bake in greased, floured 9-by-12-inch pan for around 45 minutes at 325.
(Hint: The grated zucchini I used was wicked wet, so I squeezed out a lot of liquid.)
Whoever thought mixing zucchini into choco cake must have been high on something. But still. (Suzi Thayer photo)
And the shiny dark choco boiled frosting: (takes like 4 minutes)
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate (the bar kind) and ½ cup sugar in saucepan. Turn burner on medium high and stir in ½ cup boiling water. Bring to a boil, then stir in 1 ½ tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 3 tbsp. water. Keep stirring while it bubbles and turns thick and shiny. Remove from heat and throw in a chunk of butter, a pinch of salt, and a teaspoon of vanilla.
And not that the moist (again, sorry if you hate that word), fluffy, chocolaty cake with the shiny dark chocolate frosting isn’t decadent enough, adding a big dollop of freshly whipped cream will make it even worse, or better, depending on how you look at it.
P.S. Right after I started writing this I got an email from an LCN reader, Anne Curtis. She said she had just read the story about zuke whoopie pies and wondered if I’d share the recipe for choco zuke cake. “I know I can go to Spears,” she wrote, “But you know the saying: ‘If you give me a zucchini bread, I’ll eat for a day, but if you teach me to bake it, I’ll eat forever!’”
So go ahead, Anne, eat it forever! 🙂
Adding a big dollop of freshly whipped cream will make it even worse, or better, depending on how you look at it. (Suzi Thayer photo)
P.P.S. I lied about lobster. I’m going to have to tell you what I did with the three left over. But I’ll give you a break for a couple weeks.
And the beat goes on. See ya next week.
(Suzi Thayer paints, feeds stray cats, eats good food, and drinks Manhattans. She’d love to hear from you with ideas and recipes for her column. Email sthayer@lcnme.com.)
