Philosophy Friday: I Just Ate Cake for Dinner

Dinner: Lindsey's Zucchini Cake with Spiced Frosting

Well, I was trying to ‘get it together’ all week and post something, but it just didn’t happen. Not that I really did anything this week, because I didn’t. My visions of recovering from my surgery included getting a whole bunch of reading done, writing lots of posts for my blog here, writing letters, organizing my photos on the computer, and re-doing my recipe binder. And I have done precisely none of that! (Click below to continue reading…)

What I have done is…keep my foot elevated up in the air. Yep, that’s it. Oh wait, no. I’ve also struggled to sleep, whined about the pain, tried not to throw up from the pain pills (no over-the-counter stuff allowed right now except Tylenol, which might as well be a sugar pill!), and tried to make do with having only two hands while I hobble around on crutches and simultaneously try to transport my glass of water from the kitchen to the bedroom.

The rest of my time has been spent lying outside in the sunshine. This particular activity has been extremely healing, and has certainly kept me sane!

So yesterday, I had planned to make a zucchini cake with frosting, a very ambitious idea. In the end, I only had energy for the frosting, so I made the cake today.

And then I ate it for dinner.

With crutches, it was such an effort to gather, and then put away, the baking materials that by the time the cake was done, I was in no mood to fix something healthy. So I sat down and had cake and frosting for dinner. It was fun and SO DELICIOUS! After this week of pain and frustration, cake for dinner is exactly what the doctor ordered. 🙂 So I hope that when you have a weird week, that you’ll make yourself a cake for dinner, too.

Lindsey’s Zucchini Cake

1/2 cup butter (substitute up to half with applesauce if preferred)

1 3/4 cups sugar (I like Rapadura, or sucanat)

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk, buttermilk, plain yogurt, or kefir

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups shredded, squeezed, and packed zucchini

3 cups whole wheat flour (I like using whole wheat spelt)

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp allspice

1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 rounded tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Melt the butter and beat with sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla. Stir in the zucchini. In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients, including the walnuts. Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir till combined. Grease a 9″x13″ pan and pour the batter in. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool while mixing up the Spiced Frosting.

Spiced Frosting

One 8-oz package of cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup milk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp allspice

1 1/2 to 2 cups powdered sugar

Beat the cream cheese with the milk until smooth. Add the vanilla and allspice, and then beat in powdered sugar (to your preferred sweetness level) until smooth. Spread over the Zucchini cake. The frosting will be slightly runny. You could probably reduce the amount of milk for a thicker frosting.