People Will Actually Come To A Zucchini Party!

I must admit, I did have my doubts. But ignoring the possibility that Andy & I were going to be stuck blessed with a week's worth of zucchini leftovers, I got up yesterday and boldly approached the kitchen.

First I made a wheat berry-zucchini saladusing fresh mint, a little olive oil, onions, and some balsamic vinegar,

then deciding that the zucchini-yogurt chip dip I made the day before might not be enough, I made a zucchini salsa using our very first Anaheim pepperthen it was time to tackle FROSTING THE CAKE.

You know how normally a cake bakes into a bit of a dome? Ever have one bake into a crater?
See that dip on top?Rather than trying to trim the rest of the cake to make it flat--which just sounded like a good way to get myself into trouble--I thought I would just fill it in with frosting. That was, until I found out I didn't even have enough frosting to make it past this point. Now how odd is that? Normally when I've baked cakes (like...once a year), the recipe made so much frosting that I could have frosted two cakes and a living room wall. But not today. And to make matters even more fun, in either the first or the second batch of frosting, I did something wrong, so I spent another hour trying to get the second batch to the consistency & color of the first. (Are we seeing why I don't do desserts yet?).

An hour later:and there's still a large bowl of frosting in the refrigerator because getting the frosting right required adding & adding & adding ingredients, and I could now frost TWO walls with the stuff.

Then I really went Martha and made ballots:wrapped the prizes

and picked some zinnias to use for a centerpiece:and they promptly sank. Is that normal or is this another one of those only-in-Toni's-World sort of things????

We had a great turnout, and everyone brought fabulous zucchini food (and not a single loaf of zucchini bread, I might add--everyone was much more creative), and the prizes went to:

1. a salmon-zucchini pizza, which might sound odd but was fabulous
2. a hummus made with zucchini AND peanut butter (my friends are creative people)
3. a chicken-barley salad

And the chocolate cake, while it couldn't receive votes since it was mine, was a big hit as well: