Slow Cooker Baked Chocolate Zucchini Cake
We've still got an overabundance of zucchini from the garden and while trying to come up with new ways to use it all I stumbled upon baking… in a crock pot. I never would have thought this would work, but I'm so glad it does. With a slow cooker (a.k.a. crock pot) you don't have to keep an eye on it like you do with an oven. You just pour the batter in, go off to do something else and come back 2 hours later – ideal! The cake is moist and divine… well, what dish with chocolate is not divine?
If you have a really large crockpot, just double this recipe.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup soft brown sugar (if you can find rapadura sugar it's the best)
2 small eggs
1/2 teas natural vanilla essence
4 T yogurt
1-1/4 cup wholewheat flour
2 T cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice (or nutmeg)
2 cups grated zucchini
2 T dried cranberries (optional)
Instructions:
Mix oil and sugar in a bowl until the sugar is dissolved. Add the eggs beat until creamy looking. Mix in the vanilla and yogurt.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda & salt into the mixing bowl, then add spices. Mix just enough to combine the wet and dry ingredients. Add the grated zucchini and cranberries and mix it through the batter. I find it easiest to do by hand.
Turn the crockpot on high and spray the inside with spray on oil, then line it with non-stick baking paper. The baking paper will stick to the sprayed on oil.
Slow Cooker Chocolate Zucchini Cake Is Done!
Pour the batter into the prepared slow cooker, cover and cook on HIGH for 2 hours or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Depending on your crockpot it may take anywhere from 90 minutes to 2-1/2 hours to cook. Once you learn how long your slow cooker takes you can just leave it to cook and come back after that time to remove it. No need to keep checking like you need to with a conventional oven.
When the cake is cooked, remove the lid and lift out the crock. Be careful it will be hot. Leave it to cool for 20-30 minutes, by that time you should be able to touch the crock without burning yourself. Turn the crock upside down over a wire cooling rack and the cake should easily fall out. After the cake cools completely you can store it in the fridge for a few days – if it lasts that long! It's nice eaten warm, but the flavor improves after a day in the fridge.
COOK'S TIP:
To line the slow cooker with baking paper…
Take a sheet of baking paper and lid on it. Using the lid of the slow cooker as a guide, trace a line all the way around the lid and trace another line about 2 inches away from the lid all the way around. Use scissors to cut the paper at the OUTER circle. Then make lots of cuts from the outside edge toward the center, stopping at the inner circle. Spray the inside of the crock (bowl) with oil. Now place this cut paper into the crock (bowl) and smooth it out over the bottom and up the sides. If necessary, cut a strip of paper to fit upright against the sides to cover the cut strips and make a smoother surface. You can reuse this paper for several batches of cakes.
Here are some photos, which might help to explain it a bit better:
Step 1: Trace the lid. Trace all around the lid, then draw another line about 2 inches outside of the lid.
Step 2: Make the cuts. Make the cuts from the outside edge, toward the center. Make the cut from the outer line to the inner line.
Then just cut a strip of paper to stand upright and wrap around the inside of the bowl, covering the cut strips. This way it's really easy to re-use the baking paper for another cake.
Related products you might be interested in:
- [ad#Crockpots – Amazon]
- [ad#Vegetarian Slow Cooker – Amazon]
I stumbled across your website, researching apples and Im glad I did. Thanks for the idea regarding the courgettes, last year we had more than we could cope with, as Im sure most gardner’s have experienced.
I definitely will be trying your suggestions and revisiting your site. Keep up the good work.
Thanks
Doug
@Doug thank you Doug! It certainly gives me incentive to keep working on my site when I get really nice comments like yours! Just looking at the garden developing at the moment, I’m sure I’ll have to come up with some more great tips for dealing with an abundance of zucchini again this year! Not complaining about the abundance, but I’m a bit more prepared for dealing with the onslaught this summer 🙂
And do try this cake, it’s so delicious! Freezes well too, so what I did was make one every day, eat as much as I could of it fresh (warm from the pot – yum!) then freeze the rest straight away, knowing I’d have a new fresh one the next day.
I’m definately going to try making this tonight. I’ve been searching for a good recipe a while. Thanks, look delicious.. 🙂
Thank you for sharing your post informative.
What are courgettes? I am from the US and have never heard of them. Are they a type of rhubarb?
Hi Cheryl, good question. Courgettes are young zucchini.
Are you familiar with the word marrow for a mature/big zucchini? They can be quite watery when you cook them. So the distinction is made between the different sizes, and courgettes are just picked younger. They are tastier and not as watery. But for this recipe it doesn’t actually matter too much which type you use.
I should do some translations of the different names that are used for common vegetables. I’m originally from the US, but I’ve been here so long I had forgotten that it’s not a common name there.
Why don’t you have Pinerest?
Hi Karen,
My old social media plugin which had pinterest stopped working, so I switched to this one, which does not have pinterest. I’ll be changing things on the site soon though, and I do want to add a pinterest button.