Courgette Cake

If the extent of your forays into vegetable cakes only stretches to carrot cake, then here is another yummy creation to add to your armoury. This is a moist, tangy cake, wonderful served straight from the fridge on a hot summers day.

I’ve tried several different courgette cake recipes over the years and this is my favourite – an adaptation of one I found on the internet from ‘Nordic Kitchen’ which includes pistachios, desiccated coconut and a really refreshing topping flavoured with lime juice.

You will need:

A 20 cm diameter deep cake (I actually doubled the quantities and then put them in three one litre capacity loaf tins and they fitted fine – I gave one away, we ate one ourselves and I’ve frozen the last one and although we haven’t got round to sampling it after its freezing experience I think it will be okay as the courgette grates down quite finely)

Ingredients – cake 

170g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder 
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
A pinch of salt 
2 medium eggs 
1 medium egg white
220 ml sunflower oil (I actually used rapeseed oil and it was fine)
240 g golden caster sugar
60 g unsalted pistachios, chopped. (mine were bought as whole pistachios so I chopped them myself with a sharp knife on a wooden chopping board)
50 g unsweetened desiccated coconut 
140 g courgette, grated (cut the ends off but leave the skin on) 
2 lime zest (I didn’t have any limes so I used unripe lemons) 

The original recipe had 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves but I left this out as I didn’t think the warm spiciness of cloves would complement the cool freshness of the rest of the cake – but you may think differently! 

Ingredients – cream cheese frosting

65g unsalted butter (I used salted as that’s all I had) room temperature 
65g icing sugar 
1 lime zest (again I used lemon) 
175g cream cheese (must be full fat!)
1 tablespoon lime juice (I used bottled lime juice, but the real thing is obviously a good substitute!) 
20g unsalted pistachios (roughly chopped) 
1 teaspoon desiccated coconut 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 c/Gas mark 3. Grease your cake tin, and line the base with baking parchment.
2. Sift the flour with the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda (and ground cloves if you’re using them) into a bowl and add a pinch of salt.
3. Grate the courgette (remember – ends cut off but skin left on) and if the result looks a bit soggy you can squeeze out some of the liquid, but I used quite young courgettes and there was no liquid to squeeze!
4. Pour the sunflower oil into a large bowl, add the caster sugar and mix lightly with a balloon whisk for two minutes or so. Add the two eggs and whisk again for another couple of minutes. Now add the chopped pistachios, coconut, lime (or lemon) zest and grated courgette and then add the sifted dry (flour) ingredients and fold into the wet ingredients with a spatula or large spoon – don’t over mix.
5. Whisk the egg white with a pinch of salt until it reaches the stiff peaks stage, then gently fold into the cake batter mix again being careful not to over mix.
6. Pour the cake batter into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 55 minutes or until a knife comes out clean (for me this was exactly 55 mins). Remove the cake from the oven and cool for 10-15 mins in the tin, then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.
7. To make the icing, beat together the butter and the icing sugar until really light and fluffy (it’s so hot at the moment that I was able to do this with just a wooden spoon, but if your butter is not completely soft you may need a hand-whisk for this). Add the cream cheese (must be full fat – ‘reduced fat’ options just don’t hold together well enough) lime zest and lime juice (I’m sure you could substitute lemon juice here, but the lime definitely does add a really zingy tasting dimension to the whole cake). Briefly whisk again until smooth and well combined, but don’t over mix.
8. Spread the cream cheese icing on the top of the cake. Finally sprinkle a few chopped pistachios and a teaspoon of desiccated coconut over the surface of the icing.
9. Keeping the cake wrapped in greaseproof paper in the fridge at this time of the year enhances its cool, citrus flavour and it seems to keep well like this for several days without losing its moisture.
   
   If you decide to give it a go – let me know how you get on!