Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Sorry for the blurry picture!

We picked an enormous zucchini from the garden last week and I wanted to do something special with it.  I'm tired of zucchini muffins and sauteed zucchini.  Then I thought, what's more special than chocolate?  I got this recipe from allrecipes.com and made a few adjustments.

I gave some to a neighbor who shared it with friends and they all wanted the recipe.  Another friend gave it to a picky child and he liked it too!  The nice thing is it has 3 cups of shredded zucchini and 1 cup of wheat flour.

For the icing, use whatever you like.  I tried a homemade cream cheese but it was a little strong for me. I'll try a regular vanilla next time or just some powdered sugar.

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup wheat flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
4 eggs
1 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used 1 1/4 cup of canola)
3 cups finely grated zucchini
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (I used chocolate chips instead)

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan
2.  In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.  Add eggs and oil, mix well.  Fold in the nuts and zucchini until evenly distributed.  Pour into prepared pan
3.  Bake for 50-60 minutes until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool cake completely before frosting with your favorite frosting.

Banana Boats in the Oven

When looking at Pinterest recently, I saw a post for banana boats.  I used to love making these around the campfire back in the good old days when I could camp.  I decided I would make them on the grill the next time we used it.  Well, 24 hours went by and I was craving them like crazy so I decided to try them in the oven instead.  The craving got so bad that I couldn't wait for the oven to heat up, so opted for the toaster oven instead.  My only complaint with these is that it didn't melt enough.  I've upped the temperature to 400 and the time to 15 minutes, so hopefully these settings will work better.

Ingredients:
Bananas (one per person, or more if you're really hungry!)
chocolate chips
miniature marshmallows
optional:  any other toppings you feel might be tasty

Instructions:
Slice a banana from end to end while still in the peel.  Do not slice all the way through the bottom peel.  Push the ends inward like a baked potato to pop it open a little.  Fill with chocolate chips and marshmallows.  Wrap with foil and bake at about 400 degrees for 15 minutes.  Unwrap and dig in with a fork!

Banana Cake

(Submitted by Brittney)

My mother in law has a fabulous banana cake recipe that she has lovingly passed on to her daughters-in-law.  It's light, yummy, sweet, but not too sweet.  I add mini chocolate chips to the batter and sprinkle them on top...because everything tastes better with a little chocolate, right?

Click HERE for the recipe.