Pineapple Zucchini Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This recipe is all over the place. You can thank Pioneer Woman, Ree, for creating Tasty Kitchen. I know, you are thinking everyone else blogged about it so I'm gonna skip this one. And maybe you should. I tend to ramble someone incoherently and my pictures aren't anywhere near as pretty as PW's. Your choice. I was intending to give you a reason to read my post but then I couldn't really think of one. Oh well.

Anyway. This recipe is practically health food in my book. Lots of zucchini, only 3 tbsp oil, a couple eggs and a few other things. All that sugar? Psssh don't worry about it. Just look at that huge pile of zucchini.


I upped the zucchini a bit because I bought 5 of them and this was the only recipe I had picked out for them so far. I only used 2. Better get thinking on the other 3 before they go bad. Or I'll make this again. Either way.

I sliced mine with the julienne blade on my mandoline. Me and the hand guard don't get along, especially with long, relatively skinny stuff so I ditch the hand guard and wear a cut glove to do it. Safety first kiddies! Also, those blades are SHARP. And the little ones for the julienne, they are slightly hooked for extra grab. Dig one into your palm once and you won't do it again. Trust me on this one. I know.


Here's the wets. 2 eggs, 3 tbsp oil, a splash of vanilla and a couple slices of zucchini that I didn't bother getting out of the bowl when I dumped them out because I realized I needed a bowl for my wet ingredients. Yup. You can tell, I should be a professional chef. Look how healthy it is. You can't even see the oil!


It's pretty much a standard cake recipe, combine the dry's, combine the wets, mix together, bake. For some reason the sugar is in the dry's for this recipe. Not sure why or if it matters but I actually followed it this time.

My approach when baking most things is line the pan. There's nothing worse than making a tray of brownies and then not being able to get them out of the pan or mutilating them so you lose all the nice crusty bits to the pan.

Don't even get me started on the crusty bits. I have a friend, we'll call her D, who would cut the edges off of her brownies and throw them away, thinking who would want those. I was always suspicious as to why I could never get an edge piece but I figured someone beat me to them or something. When D told me she cut them off I was aghast. Absolute horror. Who could do such a terrible thing?

Wait, this is supposed to be about zucchini cake. Right, back to the cake. Focus on the cake. Because it is a good cake. A very good cake. But it sticks. It sticks bad. I guess because it's so healthy and low in fat there isn't much to help keep it from sticking. I don't know how anyone got it out of the pan if they didn't line the pan. I baked mine in a 9x13 pyrex pan lined with foil and greased. By greased I used a very liberal spraying of cooking spray. Up the sides too. And this is what the cake looked like coming out.

Look at all the deliciousness stuck to the foil! It was somewhat upsetting. It may have gone better if I had let it cool all the way before lifting out of the pan but there is no way around all that sticking. Line and liberally grease the pan and get over it. And everything that is stuck to the foil is a chef's snack.

Just look at that tastiness.


ok I'm done rambling. Here's the recipe with my changes.

Pineapple Zucchini Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Based on this recipe on Tasty Kitchen, that was made by Linda of Linda's Country Kitchen

1-1/2 cup All-purpose Flour
1-1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 Cup Sweetened Flaked Coconut
2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt
2 teaspoons Ground Cinnamon
1 teasupoon Freshly Grated Nutmeg, To Taste
1 teaspoon fresh grated Ginger
3 tablespoons Canola Oil
2 whole Large Eggs
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
3 Cups Grated (unpeeled) Zucchini
1 (20 Oz.) Can Crushed Pineapple In Juice, Drained (reserve In Case You Need It For The Cake Batter Or The Frosting)

8 oz cream cheese, room temp
3 tbsp butter
1 to 1.5 cups powdered sugar, to taste
3 tbsp pineapple juice reserved from the canned pineapple, adjust for consistency

1 cup chopped walnuts

Shred the zucchini on a box grater or mandoline. You should let it sit for about an hour and squeeze out the excess moisture but I didn't and it didn't seem to hurt anything. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and spices. Stir the the coconut. Combine the eggs, oil and vanilla and whisk. Toss the zucchini in the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and the crushed pineapple. Stir to combine. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

Combine all the ingredients for the frosting and stir together until smooth. Taste and adjust sweetness and add more pineapple juice if necessary. Spread frosting over the cake. Lightly toast the walnuts and sprinkle over the frosting.