Zucchini, Cake, and Two Kinds of Work

When I made this cake on New Year's Eve, between my editing marathon and writing my retrospective here, it was part reward for working so hard, part eleventh-hour recognition that I'd pretty much fizzled on my "Food as Pleasure" series, and part giving zucchini another try.

Theoretically, I love zucchini. It's low-calorie but nutritious, has a neutral flavor and a great texture, is an ideal vehicle in raw foods for carrying either sweet or savory creations. Unfortunately, it doesn't love me back. That's the only conclusion I can make, after having had raw noodles and/or lasagna many times, sometimes made by myself, sometimes by someone else, and having never been able to get past a certain slimy bitterness that I always detect. Other people have eaten the same dish and loved it, so I assume it's me, not the innocent zuke.

I did remember that Elaina had a cake recipe that utilized zucchini, and I also remembered a wonderful raw chef back in the Bay Area who would bring raw cakes to potlucks sometimes that featured zucchini in the ingredients. I was way too scared of the calories in anything called "cake" back then to really indulge, except for one time, a lemon cake that just blew me away (and for most of the next day). So, when we got a couple beautiful zucchini in our Full Circle box, I knew that making this would be my well-earned study break.

I mentioned recently that it's been almost four years since I worked as a chef. It's now been a full four years since I worked with Elaina, and I still almost can't believe it's been that long: I enjoyed working with her so much and felt such a great connection.

She has a fantastic recipe page on her website--two columns of delicious sounding recipes, none of them too complicated, generally low-glycemic. I think she was the first chef to put out recipes involving Irish Moss.
This was the Ginger Spice Cake, just over half way down the page in the right column.
I had to make almond milk in order to have the almond pulp. It cracks me up that the last time I made nut milk was also when I needed pulp, for the Hallowe'en frangipane! And then I have this wonderful, rich milk tempting me in the fridge and I feel so guilty and so indulgent with every sip...(And try to give it to Phil in cocoa quickly, get it away!)
Here was my small error, though: the recipe doesn't specify whether the pulp should be wet or dehydrated. Mine was pretty wet, and I'm glad I combined the "wet" and "dry" ingredients gradually: I had a cup of "wet" leftover.
Speaking of those "wet ingredients," they consisted of Irish Moss gel, zucchini, maple syrup, and some coconut oil. And guess what? Combine those ingredients, and what you get is a very close approximation of blended young coconut meat! That may not be very exciting to those of you who live near an Asian market that sells young cocos for a buck apiece or less (as I used to), but for me, 220 miles away from young coconuts at 5 bucks apiece or more, I'd say it's a cool thing to know.

As often when I've done these "food as pleasure" challenges, I didn't quite succeed at doing the full pleasure immersion. I didn't make the frosting, because I had some leftover in the freezer that would work. But it would have been nice with more frosting.

(although this is a pre-frosted pic)

Everyone who tried it so far has liked it! I think the texture would have been better and fluffier with drier almond pulp, but it's cakey and dense, and very gingery and spicy.

So, what did I do with the leftover "wet ingredients," aka mock young coconut? Did I use it to enhance several days of smoothies? I'm afraid I didn't. I wanted to play with it and make something more--maybe a carrot cake version!

But I've been way too busy. Since I've talked about work quite a bit here recently, let me say that I've noticed, in my line of business at least, two kinds of work. There's the intense, focused, intellectual engagement, as when I'm doing complex editing or translating, writing the script for a lecture--or working on a poem, for that matter. Then, there's the processy, fiddly, put this in this order and move that over there and how do you align this and does that have the right tag attached and how does PowerPoint work anyway...all of which can take hours! As I mentioned in my last post, I really love the former, the intense intellectual engagement. I really don't love the latter. I don't feel that I have much natural talent for it, and it's easy to dismiss as a pain in the butt. Maybe I need to work on my attitude, find a way to see it as "fun," "playing around with the program."

Finally, this afternoon, after several hours of that kind of fiddle-faddle "playing around" work, I rewarded myself with some food-making playing. I did something with an eggplant, which I'll share soon. And I also took that cup of mock young coconut and mixed it with two medium grated carrots...

And then I mixed in about 3-4 tablespoons of chia seeds. And then, I thought I was going to make it into cake, but realized that since it sat for several days already, dehydrating this into sweet bread would be a better way to go. So, it's in the dehydrator right now!

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Of course, a third kind of work that I'm going to be involved in very soon, which has already started, actually, is the interacting with other people part. Which is scary to me, more because of me than because of them.
What kind of work do you like to do? Have a great weekend, working or not!