Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Mocha Frosting

My neighbor sent over these two huge zucchinis this last week, and I mean huge. Before I thought about it, I had started cutting one of them up, and I wish I had taken a picture of them so you could see how big they were. I couldn't decide what to make with them. I look at some of the blogs and saw where a lot of people were making zucchini bread. I used one zucchini to make two recipes of bread with two loaves each. To make them a little different, I changed the two recipes up and made one recipe with shredded apple and zucchini and one recipe with just zucchini. They turned out fantastic. We could not tell the difference between the recipe with apple from the recipe with just zucchini. Four loaves of Zucchini Bread was more than my husband and I could ever eat buy ourselves, so I sent two loaves over to the neighbors to enjoy. My daughter's family came over a couple of days later and they enjoyed a loaf them self.

I used one zucchini and now I still have another huge zucchini to do something with. I was wanting to make Zucchini Brownies today and decided to create a cake recipe instead using some dark chocolate cocoa powder I had in my pantry. Dr. Rosenfeld this morning on Fox new on the segment "Sunday Housecall" was saying that dark chocolate was good for you if you didn't have serious health issues like heart disease, diabetes, etc. It is amazing how good this chocolate cake is with zucchini in it. It is so most and light. For the icing I used regular cocoa powder which makes it taste more like a mocha frosting.

Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake With Mocha Frosting
Recipe adapted from: Tried-And-True Cooking With Heidi

1 3/4 cups sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
2 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup dark chocolate cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9 x 13 baking dish and set aside. In a mixing bowl with an electric mixer using the paddle attachment cream sugar, egg, oil, and vanilla. When mixture is creamy add the zucchini and mix well. In a medium bowl, mix flour, coco powder, soda, and salt, and add to the zucchini mixture. Mix well and pour into the greased baking dish. Bake 35-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool to room temperature and frost cake with the Mocha Frosting.

Mocha Frosting

1/2 cup butter softened to room temperature
1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon instant coffee
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3-4 tablespoons half and half

In a medium mixing bowl with an electric mixer using the whisk attachment, cream butter, cocoa powder, and vanilla. Add powder sugar alternating with half and half one tablespoon at a time until a creamy consistency for frosting a cake is reached..