It has never occurred to me to make a White Zucchini Cake…

I’d always made zucchini cake as a chocolate cake and reserved non-chocolate zucchini flavors for breads and muffins. I’m sure it had something to do with camouflaging those green flecks within a deep dark chocolate cake so that no one would be the wiser. At least that was going philosophy when I was young and “zucchini cake” sounded like an oxymoron.

When I saw this recipe from Amanda at I am baker, I was so intrigued that I needed to try it right away. Then I saw her Blueberry Zucchini Cake and I knew I had to make some type of one of these versions.  I hadn’t intended to blog about it; I really just wanted to try it out and see what this whole White Zucchini Cake was all about. So I started with the recipe for the White Zucchini Cake and used the flavors from the Blueberry Zucchini Cake.

The first thing I noticed about the White Zucchini Cake recipe was that I would have three egg yolks left over. Three egg yolks always become fresh lemon curd in my house. Always. Amanda frosted her cake with chocolate frosting and topped it with fresh blueberries which I thought was a delicious combination, but since I knew I’d be making lemon curd and wanted to use it for the cake, I replaced the chocolate frosting with a Whipped Vanilla Frosting.

The frosting deserves a post of its own, but since I hadn’t decided to blog about any of this until after I baked the cake, I didn’t shoot any of the frosting making process. For those of you who have read the Whipped Cream Cream Cheese Frosting post or the Whipped Chocolate Frosting post, you know I am not a huge fan of frosting that is too sugary or too buttery. This Whipped Vanilla Frosting is the vanilla version of the Whipped Chocolate Frosting and it is another wonderful, not too sweet, not too buttery frosting. #howtooverusethewordfrosting

It’s a cooked flour frosting. It starts with cooking a flour and milk mixture until it becomes a thick paste. It smells exactly like Cream of Wheat while it’s cooking, but since you’re using flour, there are no grains, just a thick, smooth paste. Then you’ll whip up your butter, sugar, vanilla and salt, add the cooled paste and whip until you end up with a beautiful, light, fluffy frosting that will not send you into a sugar coma. It’s not complicated and the results are wonderful. It’s a perfect choice for this cake.

Okay. Back to the cake. The original recipe uses a yellow zucchini to keep the cake as white as possible.  I had green zucchini and didn’t want to peel it. I thought the green flecks would be beautiful with the yellow lemon curd and the deep indigo berries. And since I didn’t need to hide the fact that the cake had zucchini in it, I went green and never looked back.

I had no idea what the texture of this cake would be like but I wanted to try to make it as fluffy as possible, so instead of just mixing in the egg whites, I whipped them up and folded them into the batter. The cakes didn’t rise as high as I had hoped, but they were cooked perfectly so I moved on. (As you can see from the photos, they layered up to be plenty tall.)

I had already decided I wasn’t going to frost the sides of the cake, so I started with a simple assembly. I took one of the cakes and spread some frosting evenly into a circle, leaving some room at the edge. I topped that with a layer of lemon curd and then completely covered the curd with a layer of blueberries. I wanted to insure that the berries stayed put, so I frosted the bottom of the top cake layer and pressed it on the berries which very effectively sandwiched them between the cake layers.

I repeated the frosting and lemon curd on the top and had intended to cover the entire top with berries, mimicking the layer I had just completed, but the lemon curd looked so pretty framed by the berries that I decided to go with a simple double row and stop there. (I had forgotten that Amanda had also done the same thing until I was setting up the links back to her post and then realized where that “inspiration” had come from :)

The combination of flavors was perfect. The cake is not super sugary sweet, so it balances well with the sweetness of the frosting and the sweet/tart lemon curd. The blueberries are the proverbial icing on top of the cake and add wonderful flavor and freshness. The cake itself has a texture that’s a little hard to describe. It’s not fluffy like a traditional white cake and yet it doesn’t have the texture of zucchini bread or muffins. It’s moist and dense and yet still has somewhat of a cake texture.

White Zucchini Cake with Whipped Vanilla Frosting, Lemon Curd and Blueberries. After I made the frosting and lemon curd, I thought I should take some photos, just in case it came out really good. Because if it was good, of course, I would want to tell you all about it. All I can say is that everyone (kids and adults) thoroughly enjoyed it…

green flecks and all :)

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