Zucchini Cake and Sauerkraut

Last week, Apple repaired my computer, after its left shift key stopped working. Apple did this repair for free. I want to contrast Apple with Breville, which offered to repair my stupid busted $240 food processor for $149, and they would then warranty it for six measly months. No thank you, I told them, I will put my $149 towards a new food processor, and it won't be a Breville. I find it environmentally irresponsible that Breville designed a food processor that didn't survive more than 2.5 years of light use, and then they offered a substantial financial disincentive to repair rather than replace it. I happily pay to repair things all the time, but $149 is excessive.

So don't buy a Breville food processor, but I shared this cautionary tale because I also want you to consider that I was without my computer for the better part of a week. While I waited for it to return, I came up with A LOT TO SAY here, all of it pithy, I assure you, on topics ranging from Mocktoberfest to a famous Italian author to....you knew this was coming...zucchini.

This weekend my family reprised last year's very successful Mocktoberfest celebration, and in addition to the sausages--both real (meat as a treat!) and Beyond--and freshly baked pretzels and beer, I added a daring new element: homemade sauerkraut. Let that sink in for a moment, just as shreds of cabbage will sink into a brine and transform.

I pictured making sauerkraut as a modest experiment, notwithstanding the immodest six-plus-pound cabbage that arrived in my grocery delivery. 

So I used a recipe (Kitchn) for making the sauerkraut in a humble jar. But even just a third or so of the enormous head of cabbage was plenty for me to make a mess when I tried to massage the shreds with salt, using my clumsy paws.

I had greater success when I pounded the shreds with the end of a rolling pin. Plus, pounding something with the end of a rolling pin is not without its satisfactions, especially in these trying times.

The climate emergency is part of what makes these times so trying, and I regret that we, as a society, did not stop it decades ago. We saw it coming. In 1968, for example, author Italo Calvino wrote a captivating, dreamy, and prescient story about the downside of consumerism, which is one driver of the crisis we face today. I heard this story read by Robert Coover on the June 4, 2013 episode of The New Yorker fiction podcast. I like to listen to the fiction podcast when I do yard work, and it is serendipitous that I heard this particular story last week, when I was already brooding about consumerism.

Coover's analysis of the story included the observation that corporations produce things for the purpose of making money, and talk people into buying things "for fear of having the economy collapse around you if you don't." It rings true, and it saddens me, and I wish that buying a new food processor did not make more sense, economically, than seeking a repair for the one I have.

Back to the sauerkraut: I had an apparent stroke of genius. Since you need to keep the shreds of cabbage submerged in their brine, I hit on the idea of using my French coffee press. I put one batch of the cabbage in there, and another batch in a repurposed pickle jar, with a smaller jar pressing down on the cabbage under the piece of cloth.

Indeed, the French press did a brilliant job of submerging the cabbage. However, when a week was up and it was time to serve the sauerkraut, the batch in the jar was perfect, but the batch in the French press smelled and tasted like metal. I had to throw it out. This is why it is good to experiment with small batches; food waste is a climate change culprit, too.

The sauerkraut after a week of fermenting

And now about that zucchini. My August 18 post about zucchini prompted not one but TWO dear friends to send me recipes for chocolate zucchini cake. It would have been a disservice to you, my readers, if I hadn't made and reviewed them both. You're welcome.

I first made the following:

Cocoa Zucchini Cake

2 ½ c. flour

½ c. cocoa

2 ½ t. baking powder

1 ½ t. baking soda

1 t. cinnamon

¾ c. margarine

2 c. sugar

3 eggs

½ c. milk

3 c. shredded, unpeeled zucchini (you don't need to squeeze out the moisture)

1 c. nuts (optional)

1 c. chocolate chips

2 t. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 10” tube or fluted pan. Mix dry ingredients. Add margarine, eggs, sugar and milk. Beat until smooth. Stir in zucchini, nuts and/or chocolate chips and vanilla. Turn batter into prepared pan. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. Ice with cream cheese frosting or simply dust with powdered sugar.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz. cream cheese at room temperature or softened

1 stick butter at room temperature or softened

1 t. vanilla

1 box (1 lb.) confectioner’s sugar

Beat together cream cheese, butter and vanilla. Add confectioner’s sugar a little at a time, beating well in-between on low speed. When the sugar has been well-incorporated, beat on medium to high speed to fluff it up. The more air you beat into it, the fluffier the frosting, and the better it will spread.

I used a Bundt pan, and it turned out great. Fudgy and rich. The frosting is divine; a nice cross between a buttercream and a more standard cream cheese frosting (for comparison, the cream cheese frosting recipe I use for frosting a carrot cake calls for only 2 tablespoons of butter, with the other ingredient amounts more or less the same).

I next made "Healthy Chocolate Zucchini Cake" (Foodlets). I used regular flour, not whole wheat. The batter fit nicely into one tray for regular-sized cupcakes (12) and one for mini-cupcakes (24). If you put those two trays into the oven at the same time, as I did, you might bake the minis for about 15 minutes, and the regular ones for about 18 minutes.

These were also delicious! These were lighter in texture than the earlier cake. They have a little less sugar, and if you make them with whole wheat flour, those are a couple healthier things going for the second recipe. And the recipe does not call for the sinfully unhealthy but heavenly frosting. 

Take your pick of either of these great zucchini recipes! Or you could strike a happy medium, adding the frosting from the first recipe to the cake or cupcakes you make using the healthier second recipe.