Vegan Zucchini Cake

Spring is here, well almost! All the gardener friends have already started growing saplings from seeds. Lazy people like me, are still deciding what should we plant this year and putting off garden work for next w/e for past month. The saplings will eventually go in the prepared garden bed, and will start growing in no time! And vegetables like tomatoes and zucchini will start producing so much that you can feed army! And soon I will be looking for recipes to use up all that produce.

Tomatoes and cucumbers are easy to use, so are some other vegetables like eggplants and bell peppers. Vegetable like zucchini just grows like weed! It outgrows your consumption capacity, your friend's and sometimes your complete neighborhood's consumption capacity!! And in that case, you need few things that can take enormous amount of zucchini. I make few other things with zucchini. I will share those recipes eventually. The cake I am going to share today is one such thing. Recipe was originally shared by Nicole but I first saw it from this post by my friend TC. I loved the title and I made it few times last year. I have changed few things from original recipe and completely veganized it.

2 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup Turbinado Sugar
1/2 cup Canola Oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp Lemon zest
4 Oz Unsweetened applesauce
3-4 cups Shredded Zucchini
1/2 cup Chopped Walnuts
2 tbsp Flax Seed Powder + 6 tbsp Warm Water  (Equivalent of two eggs)

Preparation - 
Mix flax seed powder with water, remove lumps. Set aside for 10-15 min.
Preheat oven at 350F.
Grease 9x13 pan with oil and dust with little flour. 
Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set it aside.
Now mix oil, sugar, vanilla, applesauce and flax seed mixture. Mix thoroughly until well combined.
Add  flour mixture to the wet mixture. Combine until the flour is incorporated completely.
Now fold in zucchini and walnuts. 
Pour batter in the greased baking pan.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until the toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Remove promptly, let it cool completely before slicing.

Tips -

1. I have also used ENER-G egg replacer instead of flax seed powder and results were equally good. 
2. I buy single serve 4oz applesauce cups. 
3. I have tried making this with just 3/4 cup sugar and results were good, but it was more like bread than cake.