Tried my hand at two new treats this week

A couple of weeks ago I went on a Pinterest spree. I found a pinner with tons of dinner and dessert recipes that sounded delicious, and she was linked to lots of other great pinners, so I started repinning everything. Problem with me is that I really do like to bake and cook, and I really wanted to try making the things I pinned! So then I had to actually organize and print the recipes. That's what I've been up to with some of my free time lately! (By the by, if you want some great recipes, check out the "Food I Have to Make" board by https://pinterest.com/sfarmer2).

This week I tried out several new recipes, including two desserts. Here's my recap:

It's zucchini season and I've got an abundance (despite giving them away to neighbors, co-workers, siblings, and parents, and putting them in nearly everything we eat). So first I tried my hand at a chocolate, chocolate chip zucchini bread. The recipe calls them cakes, but I reduced the sugar and I think they are really more like breads. Here's the recipe I started with (which is an adaptation of a Food Network recipe, apparently).

As I was mixing ingredients, I thought to myself, I should replace the sugar with agave. Problem is, agave is a wet ingredient and regular sugar is a dry ingredient. So obviously I need to make some more adaptations. Because I like to take it easy on the sugar, I reduced the recipe to 1 cup of agave. I also only had two eggs in my fridge (original calls for 3). That's fine, since I was trying to re-balance the wet-dry ratios anyway. I also reduced the amount of oil to 1/2 cup (and I used olive oil because I'm weird like that). They came out somewhat dry. Not in a bad way, at least not so that I minded, but I think most people would want a little more moisture. So I'd say go for the full cup of oil. OR you could amp the agave back up to the whole  1+1/2 cup, since the resulting product was more bread-like than cake-like. Finally, I cooked the loaves for 50 minutes, which was a tad too long.

In the end, here's my recipe for...

Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread with Agave

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1 cup agave*
2 eggs*
1/2 cup olive oil*
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 packed cups grated zucchini (don’t peel it)
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven at 350 F. Spray two 9×5 inch bread pans with nonstick spray.

In a bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, mix the agave, eggs, oil and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients along with the zucchini and chocolate chips. Stir until combined, and divide between the loaf pans. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the tops are cracked and springy to the touch. Makes 2 loaves.

*Note: This bread might be a tad dry for some people, so depending on your preference, consider adding one more egg or another 1/2 cup of oil. If you need a sweeter and more moist bread, then add another 1/2 cup of agave.

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My other new dessert recipe this week was a strawberry cream pie. We took it to our friends' house on Friday evening and it was a hit -- a simple, cool dish for this hot weather.

The recipe I used called for a graham cracker crust and instructs you to make a huge batch of the creamy filling. The lady must have one freaking hue pie dish -- she doubled the whipped cream and cream cheese from the original recipe! You also have to slice up a carton of strawberries. In the end, it wasn't hard work, but it did take about an hour to assemble. It was the only thing I was able to accomplish during naptime on Friday.

Now that I've been through the recipe and tasted the resulting pie, I recommend some adaptations for the adaptation. I'm not going to rewrite the recipe -- I'll just refer you to the source and give you my notes (whenever I get a chance to remake the recipe with some of these changes, I'll actually post it... but since the suggestions are untested, I don't want to give you a "bad" recipe).

I like a thicker graham crust, so I used about double the crackers. Somehow the resulting amount of crushed crackers was not much larger -- about 2 cups, instead of 1+1/2. I also used chocolate graham crackers, instead of the regular kind. (The original recipe calls for a classic pie crust. It would be a different flavor, but also yummy, I'm sure!) Also, I should have added more melted butter to my crust, since it was thicker.

There was no way all that creamy filling could fit in my pie plate, so I had to scrape a bunch out and now it's just hanging in my fridge. I'd suggest using the "whipped" cream cheese than comes in an 11 or 12oz container and about 1+1/2 cups of heavy cream. (In other words, I think you should use more of the creams than the original recipe, but not as much as the adapted recipe.)

I didn't try agave in this recipe but I wanted to! With all the sweetness of the strawberries and chocolate, I think you could sub in 1/3 to 1/2 cup agave and it would be plenty sweet... but I'm am a tad worried that the cream filling would become watery...? Maybe not, if the agave were whipped in the cream rather than the cream cheese? Hmm. Something to try.

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With that, naptime is almost over and I need to put a cinnamon bread in the oven! I must run. Hope you all had a lovely week.