This week’s giveaway went to a pretty amazing group of athletes.  You may remember this family that I gifted my celebration of fall loaf, Apple Brown Butter Bourbon Brioche.  Well, when your inspiring friend calls and asks if you could make some bread for a BBQ fundraiser they are having to support their sports team, you, of course, say, “YES!”  But this being a hot dog BBQ, it felt like we needed to choose “bread,” not say, a chewy sourdough.  So, with that in mind, I got to work on some beautiful quickbreads that we can be honest here–this is a safe space–and call cake.  If you bake them in a loaf pan, you can wink and call it bread, but when you do what I did and put it in a bundt, well, it’s cake people.

I knew I wanted to make two different types, so I went with a few tried and true favorites.  The one pictured above is a double Chocolate Zucchini Bread (cake) with a few twists up its sleeve.  First, it enjoys the addition of coffee (so good for adding depth with chocolate!) and then it pulls out the big guns in my opinion…just the tiniest background flavor of almond.  Listen, I am crazy about almond flavored things.  Filled croissants, cakes, cookies.  It is entirely my jam.  Now, with everything else going on in this cake, you could easily say, why add the almond flavoring?  Well, here is the thing. I know zucchini is in the name, but this isn’t really a cake meant to celebrate the flavor of zucchini.  It is a cake that celebrates the wonderful moisture that zucchini adds to cake.  So maybe it should be called Double Chocolate Almond Cake  But then why is zucchini in the name?  Well, springing unadvertised vegetables on people in the form of cake is wrong.  It is just is.  You must advertise!

(Sidebar, I went down a wonderful internet rabbit hole trying to find a link to a clip from a Parks and Recreation episode where Chris Traeger brings a veggie loaf instead of cake to a party and Ron Swanson was, well, Ron Swanson about it.  Sadly, the internet failed me and all I could find were quotes–really youtube?–so I encourage you to watch the Fancy Party/Season 3 Episode 9 sometime.  Actually, all of the episodes, but think of this when you get to Fancy Party.)

So, back to the cake, the almond, the coffee, the chocolate, and yes the zucchini, just sort of work together in a delightful kitchen alchemy that makes for a delicious combo.  Cake 1 and 2 were covered with this great recipe.

For my second cake, I wanted to go back to be inspired by the season, so I chose pumpkin bread (cake).  I feel like everyone, everyone (!) has a pumpkin bread recipe, and I am not going to suggest mine is the BEST ever, absolutely, bar none.  I think Pumpkin bread may be a little like meatloaf, and you just really love what your mom made or what you are used to.  But I strongly feel that mine is really, really good.  I find it delightfully moist, spiced, and lovely.  Could there be a better recipe out there?  Maybe.  I have tried others and continue to return to making this one.  Don’t worry, I will post the recipe soon so you can see how it stacks up against your favorite.  It is dead easy, so it has that going on, as well as a simplicity that is sometimes lacking   So there you have it, that was cake number 3 and 4.

I didn’t stick around for the actual sale, as my role in this whole project is to gift some divinely inspired baked love and leave it at that.  And the delivery, aside from the baking, is really my favorite part.  It is wonderful to meet people and to get to bring a little light into their lives even for a brief moment–even in the middle of a parking lot at the local hardware store.