Hello my fellow organic garden enthusiasts. Those of you who have followed my garden updates will be surprised to hear that my large, demanding, Machiavellian Sicilian zucchini plant has finally produced a zucchini! For those that don’t know what I’m talking about and are interested, can read my Sicilian Zucchini plant saga here, here and here.

So it took all summer but the infamous zucchini plants actually graced me with a single mammoth zucchini and it seemed to happen overnight. One day I closed the backyard garden door and didn’t see anything growing. The next day I went out and a zucchini appeared. The zucchini was perched precariously over the main wood support of the arbour created to support them but didn’t look ready for picking, so I left it. In the span of about a week it became the size of a baseball bat and that was only the beginning. It just kept getting bigger.

I went outside to tend to my tomatoes one day, (you can read about my late blooming tomatoes here if you’d like) and I looked over at the zucchini plant and it was gone. My first thought was that an animal attacked it – a really big animal. When I looked around, I found it nestled under the arbor, still attached to the vine and mixing with the regular zucchini plants. Actually it had squashed them but truthfully they had stopped growing and started dying a few weeks ago. I picked the zucchini, which was no worse for wear and went to bring it into the house. Since it was well over two feet long, I was carrying it over my shoulder when I felt something hit me. I turned around and looked down and saw that the zucchini broke over my shoulder and must have hit me on the way down. I retrieved the other end from the ground and carried both pieces in.  I can’t say I have ever been attacked by a zucchini before but this plant has been causing me problems all season so I’m not surprised.

The zucchini plant now shows no signs of producing anything else but I’m still holding out hope as there are still tons of flowers on it (as there have been since June).  Now that I have this gigantic zucchini I intend on making a Meatless Monday zucchini stew and my decadent chocolate zucchini cake which I am sharing below. This is a great zucchini cake recipe and it’s always a big hit with adults and kids and no one will ever know there are zucchini in it. Enjoy and (as always) happy gardening and baking too!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

To make sour milk: spoon 1 tbs vinegar or lemon juice into a 1 cup glass measuring cup. Add enough milk to make ½ C and let stand for 5 minutes

Ingredients:

• ½ C butter or margarine, softened
• ½ C vegetable oil
• 1 ½ C granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ½ C sour milk (see below for instructions) or buttermilk
• 2 ½ C all purpose flour
• ¼ C unsweetened cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 2 C grated, unpeeled zucchini (3-4 cups works as well)
• 1 C chocolate chips/chunks

Directions:

Grease and lightly flour a 9-by-13-inch baking pan or two loaf pans or a bundt pan or a muffin pan. In a large bowl, cream butter or margarine, oil and sugar together until light. Add eggs, vanilla and sour milk or buttermilk and beat until smooth. In another bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder. Add to creamed mixture, beating well. Stir in zucchini. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips/chunks on top. Bake in preheated 325^o F over 40 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center cones out clean. Cool on wire rack. When cool, then cut into squares. It yields 24 servings in a 9-by-13 pan.