Chocolate Zucchini Cheesecake

Pi is such an "infinitely" cool thing, I thought I'd pay homage to it by having a pi week.

(kind of like how birthdays can turn into birth-weeks... or even birth-months!)

Everyday this week I have decided to make pie, some for dinner, others for dessert.

My aim is to create unique pies. I enjoy the challenge of creating new things with ingredients I already have on hand, and this pie is definitely one of those times.This came out quite good for an experimental idea.

Adding a vegetable to a cheesecake seems like an "irrational" thing to do, but hey, so is pi!

Read on to see the process of how I put it all together.

I like to make everything from scratch. I suppose you could buy chocolate wafers and crumble them up. I like adding certain spices to chocolate, so this enabled me to do that.

Crust

(Preheat oven to convection 325)

1 stick of room temp salted butter

2/3 cup coconut sugar

Cream for 5 minutes, using mixer w/paddle

To that add:

1/2 cup flour, mix, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, mix, 1/2 cup flour, mix.

Add heaping tsp each of ground coffee beans and cinnamon

Mixture is crumbly, but has some stick to it

Spread onto silpat and bake for 20 minutes

When done, shut off oven, remove, and put a small glass bowl of 3 tbsp butter in, to melt.

Filling
Grate zucchini, then add to blender and puree

Add:

two eggs

2 pinches salt

2 tsp of gelatin powder

1/2 tsp of each: BP, ginger, van ext

1/4 tsp each cloves, nutmeg

1/2 cup each of cocoa powder and flour

1/4 cup each of honey, coc sugar, yogurt

Puree again

Drop in package of soft cream cheese and puree again

Remove glass bowl from oven and set to 350.

In bowl, add cooked cookie crumb mix and melted butter together.

I used a wooden spoon to combine/mash thoroughly.

Press crumb crust into pie plate

Pour mixture into that. (There was 1. 5 cups leftover, which I baked in a couple of ramekins)

Bake pie for 45 minutes.

Pie will rise toward end, then collapse a bit while cooling
Sift powdered sugar over. I cut out a paper template for the pi symbol, and poured green sprinkles on top. Thought green was appropriate for the zucchini, but also nice as St Patrick's day is coming up.

Let cool for 30, then chill for 3-4.

~ The roundest knight at King Arthur’s table was Sir Cumference. He ate too much pi.