I have been a very very bad food blogger. It’s time I confessed my crimes and made amends. My darling friends and readers, I have been keeping these from you:

I know. It’s nearly unforgivable….except for the fact that you’d have to forgive me and keep reading to get the recipe. The reason I’ve held on to this recipe for so long is simple, I’ve been swamped in my non-food life recently. First I was offered an amazing job opportunity in late August, which I accepted, and started my first day on the job this past Monday. Monday also happened to be my birthday, and since you can’t party like it’s your birthday on a Monday as well as a Friday, I consumed the entire weekend into my birthday net. The weekend before that (when I actually made the cupcakes) I was stuffing myself silly at the State Fair and suffering from allergies that left me sounding like Fran Drescher or possibly a smoking goose.

But none of that matters now. What matters now is that I am sorry, and once you’ve forgiven me enough to read the rest of the post you need to jump up off the couch and go buy some zucchini NOW! Actually, go get the zucchini now, and THEN finish reading this post because these cupcakes are best with fresh zucchini and the season is ending now!

Cake Ingredients: (makes just over 2 dozen cakes)

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup applesauce
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups shredded zucchini (or courgettes for my friends abroad)

Frosting Ingredients: (makes enough to frost all the cupcakes with some left over)

• 2 1/3 cups powdered sugar
• 3 sticks of butter at room temperature
• 2 oz. cream cheese
• 1tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 tsp. all spice

Directions for the cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two cupcake pans with liners of your choice.

2. In a small bowl, combine the spices and add to the flour, sugars, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk to combine.

3. Add the wet ingredients one at a time and beat to combine. Shred the zucchini (I used a food processor) and stir it into the batter.

4. Pour the batter into a gallon-sized bag, snip the off the tip of a bottom corner and use the bag to pipe the batter evenly into the paper cups.

5. Pop the pans into the oven, bake for 15-18 minutes and poof! Magically delicious veggie cupcakes.

Directions for the frosting:

1. Beat the butter and the cream cheese in an electric mixer. Add the vanilla and beat to combine. Slowly add the powdered sugar (feel free to adjust the amount based on the consistency of frosting you’re looking for) and after beating throughly, add the allspice.

2. Spoon the frosting into a gallon-sized bag and use the corner snipping tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.

3. Unwrap those suckers and enjoy the bounty of late summer!