During New Jersey summers one often finds oneself confronted with an overabundance of zucchinis. One of my favorite uses for them is ginger-zucchini cupcakes, a recipe I found on epicurious.com. Last summer I made up a few batches of them with yellow zucchinis from our own garden, but today I was using the standard-fare green kind from our farm membership. This recipe is sweetened with crystallized ginger and honey, has a kiss of orange zest in it, and is spiced with more ginger and some cinnamon. It yields a product more like a carrot cake than zucchini bread, and was well worth jumping the gun on our countertop installation (scheduled for tomorrow).
I made a double batch today, using up three of my zucchinis. Most are marked for the dead-body freezer, to be meted out at a steady pace, but a lucky few were deliciously frosted with a ginger-cinnamon cream cheese frosting. It was a scrumptious and auspicious launch for our new kitchen, and a far less wholesome use for part of our farm membership than my usual approach of grilling or sauteing the veggies. I mean, zucchini for dessert? Perfect!
12 Comments
July 23, 2007 at 12:43 am
oh, I LOVE zucchinis! I like them best raw but in muffins is also great.
July 23, 2007 at 1:02 am
If I wasn’t already practically barfing from a birthday cake binge, I would probably be licking my laptop monitor in an effort to taste that cream cheese frosting. I love, love, LOVE spicey cakebits with cream cheese frosting.
Also, nice butterfly plate.
July 23, 2007 at 2:48 am
Oh now those just look incredible. I love zucchini in pretty much every form, and zucchini bread is amazing enough; add cream cheese and ginger in the mix and I’m sold. Definitely going to have to try making them :)
July 23, 2007 at 8:44 am
What’s most impressive about this recipe is that Pookie will eat it. She hates zucchini (because… I don’t know. I can’t figure out how one would hate zucchini) and the concept of using it in baked goods, but this recipe transcends that. They are so good, in fact, that she let me pose them on her butterfly cake stand — thanks for noticing it, Katebits!
Steph, one of the secretly most awesome things about this recipe is that it gives you an excuse to buy crystallized ginger.
July 23, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Cream cheese frosting is so unbelievably, orgasmically amazing.
July 23, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I have to agree with you on that front, kms2. When I was leaving for work this morning and grabbing an unfrosted cupcake (the lack of frosting makes it a muffin, right?) for my breakfast I was like, “What am I thinking? Why not just bring the leftover frosting and a spoon?”
July 23, 2007 at 3:44 pm
The cream cheese frosting is what originally prompted me to try these muffcakes (cupcakes and muffins in one) in the first place, since they seemed suspiciously vegetable-laced.
July 23, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Good lord. Those muffins sound, quite simply, astounding.
This has inspired me to look out a choc-chip courgette (or zucchini to you lot!) cake recipe – an American friend once made one for my folks, and it was amazing. Don’t know why they aren’t more common over here – plenty of carrot cake, but never courgettes…
July 23, 2007 at 3:59 pm
“Courgette”? Seriously? WOW! This blog has already paid for itself, what with all the international language learning I’m doing here! (I think I just pommerdoodled myself a little bit thinking of a chocolate-chip zucchourgette cake…)
July 23, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Oh my. These have everything I love in them. Everything! Hey, does crystallized ginger go bad? I love having an excuse to buy it too, but I only use a wee bit at a time. I guess sugar doesn’t preserve things as well as salt, huh? My chemistry not so good. Thanks for the inspiration.
Muffcakes. Tee hee!
July 23, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Eug, I have no idea how long the ginger would keep. I mean, as far as sugar as a preservative agent, I’m just not sure how much, say, meat you’d want to preserve that way…
December 11, 2007 at 1:13 am
I’m getting hungry already!