Girl 1 wanted to make heart-shaped biscuits with gravy and a Valentine's cake for her dinner this week. It turned out that she had a buddy here, so he helped with the project, too.

Here they are with their lovely creation.

Now, if you see them, feel free to tell them what a lovely job they did. But, please do not tell them that the cake had zucchini in it!

Because I knew we'd have our friend over and that she wouldn't want to spend their entire after-school time in the kitchen prepping dinner, I helped her out by baking the cake before she got home, leaving them to deal with the icing, biscuits, and gravy.

This, of course, allowed me to experiment with a healthier-than-traditional cake. It was surprisingly good (and I'm not a big cake person). In fact, it was rich enough that it would have been great with just a dusting of powdered sugar.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all dry ingredients:

1/3 c. whole wheat flour

1/3 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. brown sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. cocoa powder

Then, mix in the rest of the ingredients:

2/3 c. applesauce

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 c. shredded zucchini

1/2 c. chocolate chips (we used dark chocolate)

Pour into a well-greased bundt (if you plan to dust with powdered sugar) or, as we did, a square and a round to create the heart. Bake until toothpick comes out clean (ours took about 25 minutes).

Allow to cool about 10 minutes before turning out of the pan.

Enjoy!

One of the things I love about this recipe is that I already had all ingredients on hand. When we'd had our fill of zucchini back in the summer, I shredded some and froze it for future use. I think these might also be good as cupcakes. Keep in mind, though, that it doesn't rise a whole lot, so you'll need to fill those muffin cups pretty full if you go that route. For the link to the original recipe, click here.