Carrot and Zucchini “All Gone” Cake

I have been wanting to try out more desserts – Yummy treats with hidden veggies, preferably vegan – but, shocking as it may be, I don’t have a whole lot of “leisure” cooking time.  Flintstone’s Birthday was a perfect opportunity to try a new recipe that was both delicious (hopefully) and deceptively nutritious.

Carrot cake was an obvious starting point for me because our whole family LOVES carrot cake, but we rarely get to indulge.  Plus, Flintstone thoroughly enjoyed his carrot cake at his first birthday party:

But I knew I wanted to add more than just carrot since traditional carrot cake doesn’t actually have that much nutritional value. I decided on zucchini because I happened to have some very nice local zucchini from the Farmer’s market on hand, and I know zucchini bakes well.

Finally, I decided to come up with a vegan recipe. We are not technically vegan. We have backyard chickens for eggs, and I could have just as easily used eggs in the recipe, but then I probably wouldn’t have posted it. Some people don’t think twice before using grocery store grade eggs in a recipe, even with all my harping on ethical eating. So by posting a recipe that calls for eggs, I worried I would be inadvertently encouraging people to buy or use more eggs. If you aren’t familiar with the sickening practices of egg factories, including throwing thousands of baby chicks into meat grinders ALIVE, the please be a responsible human being and educate yourself about the products you buy.

It’s not like me to forget to take pictures of food, but I was pretty wrapped up in Flintstone’s birthday, so this it the only decent picture I got of his cake:

I was worried when I was making it because it had SO many veggies veggies in the batter and it looked a little dense, but it turned out really great, and it was a huge hit.  As soon as it was served, people started asking me what was in it and asking for the recipe, and it was at that moment that I realized that I needed a better picture for the post, but, alas, the entire cake was quickly consumed.  Which is why I have dubbed it my “All Gone” cake:

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp Ground Flax Seeds
6 Tbsp water
2 Cups shredded organic carrot
2 Cups shredded organic zucchini
2 Cups Fair Trade/Equal Exchange Brown sugar (white sugar is ok, too)
1/2 Cup coconut oil (or other oil, your choice)
2 Cups fun flour and all purpose whole wheat flour*
2 Tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tsp ground nutmeg
pinch cloves (optional)
1 Tsp salt
2 Tsp baking soda

* We have been experimenting a lot with alternative kinds of flour.  I actually used about 1/3 coconut flour, 1/3 teff flour, and 1/3 all purpose whole wheat flour.  Different kinds of flour are fun and can really up the nutritional value of the recipe, but be aware that they may change the liquid requirements.  I just continued adding almond milk and water until my batter reached a “batter” like consistency before I added the veggies, and it turned out perfect!

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 (or don’t, and save a little electricity).  Use coconut oil to grease and flour a 9X13 cake pan.

2.  Thoroughly blend the Flax Seed Meal with the Water – you may want to use a food processor for maximum effect.  Let sit for at least 5 minutes.  During which time, you can:

3. Grate the carrots and zucchini.

4.  In a large batter bowl, mix the flax seed goo with the sugar until creamy, then stir in the coconut oil until well mixed.

5.   Add in the flour(s), spices, salt, and baking soda, and mix well.  Add almond milk or water as necessary to achieve a “batter” like texture.

6.  Stir in the carrots and zucchini – you could also throw in some nuts in this step if you wanted.

7.  Pour/spread into the prepared pan.  Bake approximately 50 minutes until a reusable skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

Vegan “Cream Cheese” Icing:

Do you have any idea what they do to dairy cows, and, even worse, what they do to the baby cows they have to continually impregnate dairy cows with to keep them producing milk?  I, quite honestly, had no idea.  I went on eating cheese long after I stopped eating meat.  Even though I have tried to train myself to always questions where my food comes from, I was raised in a culture that takes food for granted.  And I LOVE cheese.  Love it.  It was the one food I never thought I’d give up.  Until the first time I saw a newborn calf being brutally dragged from it’s mother, both of them crying out for each other, the baby being carelessly injured in the process, and the mother remaining locked in a small cage, producing milk, set to repeat the whole process every year of her life.  Just remembering it is almost making me cry now.

I love cheese, and there are still some places I can get it, local goat farmers who I know don’t engage in these practices, and maybe one day we’ll have our own cow.  It is, after all, possible, after allowing time for cow and calf to establish a relationship, to take 1/2 the cow’s milk production humanely.  But you won’t catch me buying cheese, or any other dairy product, from a grocery store ever again.

So, please, if you can’t find or are unwilling to use vegan cream cheese, which is now available in almost every grocery store except Piggly Wiggly (ugh!), top this cake with something else.  Use Cinnamon icing, or any frosting recipe from Happy Herbivore.

Ingredients:

VEGAN Cream Cheese
Fair Trade Confectioners/Powdered sugar
Almond Milk (or your choice non-animal milk) – Vanilla flavored works great.
Cinnamon

Directions:

There are no set proportions for this recipe, at least the way I make it.  I used about 3/4 a standard container of vegan cream cheese, maybe 3/4 a cup of powdered sugar, and more almond milk than I needed.  I like my icing so that it drizzles over the cake, but really I had intended to make frosting so the cake would be easier to decorate.

Put your cream cheese and sugar into a bowl and add small amounts of the almond milk, mixing in a little at a time, until you reach desired consistency.  Adjust sweetness with more sugar.

Add cinnamon to taste.

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Stand back, and watch it disappear.  This cake will be all gone faster than Todd Aikin’s credibility at a feminist rally.

As always, if you try it, please stop back by and let me know how you like it!

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Today I’m linking up with Impulsive Addict and Seriously Shawn for Talk to Us Tuesday.  I rarely do blog memes, but this one has no rules, so it’s hard to resist (almost as hard to resist as the lovely hosts).