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chocolate and zucchini cake

* adapted from elise's recipe

ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped pecans
3/4 cup chocolate chunks
glaze

instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Combine the four, cocoa, baking powder, soda, salt, and cinnamon; set aside.

3. With a mixer, beat together the butter and the sugar until they are smoothly blended. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. With a spoon, stir in the vanilla, orange peel, and zucchini.

4. Alternately stir the dry ingredients and the milk into the zucchini mixture, including the nuts and chocolate chunks with the last addition.

5. Pour the batter into a greased and flour-dusted 10-inch tube pan or bundt pan. Bake in the oven for about 1 hour (test at 45 minutes) or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes; turn out on wire rack to cool thoroughly.

6. Drizzle glaze over cake.

Glaze: Mix together 2 cups powdered sugar, 3 Tablespoons milk, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Changes, hints, tips and thoughts for this recipe:

• I added the chocolate chunks...just for another layer of chocolate and another dimension of texture to the cake. YUM.

• I would definitely make this cake again -- it turned out so decadently moist (because of the zucchini!) and really quite delicious. And, as S. pointed out: if you didn't read the recipe you would not have known there was zucchini in it at all!

• I baked this in a plain tube pan (because I didn't have a nice bundt pan yet)...next time I definitely would make it in the fancy bundt pan...if for asthetic reasons only.