hey everyone welcome to Pai's kitchen today i'm going to share with you my favorite chocolate
cake recipe it is a chocolate zucchini cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting oh it is
so good and it's my favorite for two reasons one it is super easy and very forgiving - it
is actually quite healthy as far as cakes go and I got this recipe from my best friend's mother
and I've been making it for literally 10 years it is that good and today I'm going to share it with
you so let's get started so this recipe makes one 8 inch round cake okay now what we're going to do
is I've greased this on the side and I'm going to line the bottom with parchment paper because
you don't want to have issues with the cake coming out okay so a little trick for making round pieces
of parchment paper what I'm going to do is fold it into first a square I mean you don't have to
get rid of this part but I like to because it just makes it a little easier just like that and then
you have a square with this you're going to keep folding it and you keep folding it so that you
keep having this point right here it just fold it until it's small like this and then you want
to measure out 1/2 from the center just roughly and then right here at the edge then you cut it
off there you go that's fit it all you get this perfectly will not perfectly but round enough
piece of parchment paper for the bottom of your pan let's do with the dry ingredients so I've
got here - some all-purpose flour now this is where the healthy part comes in I modified this
recipe from the original to also include some whole wheat flour and I found that I couldn't
barely tell the difference it's actually really surprisingly good now we're going to add cocoa
powder and with cocoa powder I like to sieve it sift it okay maybe use a bigger sieve I forgot
my big sieve ah because cocoa powder tends to have a lot of clumps in it baking powder and
baking soda but I'm also going to sieve these especially baking soda because they like to
clump up a little bit of salt and then you're just going to give it a whisk so that's the
dry ingredients and now we're going to do our white ones I've got some brown sugar in here
dark brown if you don't have you can do light brown or even white sugar will work but I do
like that intense molasses flavor some oil now you can use any kind of neutral flavored oil I
happen to be using avocado oil I'm just going to give it a mix just to break up also the lumps in
brown sugar okay and now I'm going to add two eggs but one at a time and goes my second day
okay so you just want to beat it until it's sort of like light and you can see lots of air
bubbles a little bit fluffy I've done this with just like really whisking vigorously works just
as well now we're going to add some yogurt mini spatula to scrape off every last bit especially
thick things like yogurt and vanilla give that another were okay so now the healthiest part of
this whole thing the grated zucchini now use the large hole grater don't use the tiny tiny little
graders and this is just about one medium sized zucchini you should not need more than one case
I'm going to add that into here give it a stir hmm if you're not familiar with the concept of
chocolate zucchini cake you actually don't taste the zucchini at all but the zucchini will make
the cake incredibly moist without making it dense and rich it's really quite amazing okay and now
it's as easy as making a muffin you're going to pour the wet into the dry and scrape every last
bit now I'm just going to stir the two together you don't want to over mix it however this batter
is actually more forgiving than most cake batters in terms of how much you can stir it because the
whole wheat flour will prevent too much gluten formations little bran and germ will actually
cut the gluten strands so your cake even if you stir it a little bit too much won't be tough okay
so now it's almost mixed but not entirely what I'm going to do is stop and scrape my spatula
because what I find is there's always so much gunk in here and then I finish doing it and then
suddenly my spatula has all this dry flour stuck to it so you want to scrape it before you're done
and then add some chocolate chips so this is the secret little secret of this cake is there's tiny
little pleasant surprises all throughout now you don't have to do chocolate chips you can do
I wanted to do dried apricots I think that'll be really good so we can add whatever you want it's
a really forgiving batter one last stir just so you no longer see any dry clumps of flour
and that is it how easy is that so this is going to go into a 350 degree oven for about 40 to 45
minutes in the middle rack okay so here is the cake I use a toothpick test for this and if you
insert the toothpick and you pull it out and it comes out relatively clean it's okay it's such
a moist cake that if it doesn't come out pristine dry I find it's okay as long as it's not wet like
you don't see batter on the toothpick now before I take this cake out I'm just going to let it cool
and settle down for about five minutes so to get this cake out run something flat along the side
of the cake make sure nothing's catching chocolate cakes are particularly sticky for some reason okay
and then I'm going to take my cooling rack one two three hub and it falls out easily because we put
that parchment paper the perfectly round part of parchment paper on the back yay okay the reveal
decision and now we're going to let this cool absolutely completely before we put the icing
on it if you put icing on a hot cake even slightly warm the icing will just melt okay so the cake is
cool and I can barely contain my excitement I want to eat it low bad so we're gonna make the frosting
first though this is a white chocolate cream cheese frosting so I've got some cream cheese
and some butter here that has been sitting out not too long just until it's soft enough to beat
I don't like it when it's completely you know really soft I find the frosting become too too
runny and it's harder to work with so just going to beat these two until they're nice and fluffy
okay I'm going to add my melted white chocolate so this is just white chocolate that I melted in
the microwave I don't want this super super hot because if this is hot it'll melt the butter and
the cream cheese instantly cream cheese butter and white chocolate Oh could anything be better and to
scrape it down once or twice and then before I do my final mixing I'm going to add icing sugar this
icing is actually not that sweet just a dash of vanilla there you go a little bit for good luck
okay but that looks good ready to frost now you can turn this recipe into cupcakes if you
want or you can do like a big rectangular sheet cake ice them and then cut them into
squares whatever you want okay and then before you finish what I like to do is
do a final design on top of the cake by just running my spatula back and forth and then
when you do this if there's any part that's too thin you'll catch it too because then
you'll be able to see the cake right through and then there's that you can leave it just
like this I like to add pistachios on top because I love that green color oh my god
check that out I'm so excited ooh I can see the melty bits of chocolate chips mmm
I don't even know what to say oh really chocolatey I love the melty bits of chocolate chips in there
oh and the it's so moist that's what the zucchini does it keeps a cake incredibly
moist yet it is not dense or rich like you know a fudge cake might be on that icing
the tartness from the cream cheese just really puts it at its happy place nutty pistachios it
is so good so the recipe as always will be on hot Thai Kitchen calm when you make it send me
a photo on Facebook Twitter Instagram and if you haven't subscribed to the show right here
so you won't miss a single episode and I will see you next time for your next
delicious adventure I'm just going to let it cool and settle down for about 5 minutes