courgette & lemon cake
There are plenty of websites with different versions of this, as with all our recipes, you can make adjustments to suit your particular tastes eg. use gluten free flour, or use lime or orange, we’ve used flax seeds instead of eggs. This recipe is from veggiedesserts.com/courgette-cake/
We’ve made a few of these, the batter in the picture below was a little wet, as we used quite a lot more courgette and maybe didn’t squeeze it out enough, which meant the cakes collapsed a bit after taking out of the oven, though it didn’t make much difference to the taste and meant they stayed moist. Once cooled, we slice and freeze them.
PREP TIME: 10 mins - we’d say a bit longer and add more for clearing up!
COOK TIME: 1hour hr 15 mins
INGREDIENTS
350 g (3 cups) courgette raw, approximately 1-2 medium
125 ml (½ cup) vegetable oil plus extra for greasing
2 flax ‘eggs’ (2 tablespoon of ground flax stirred into 6 tablespoon of water and allow to stand for 5 minutes to become gelatinous)
100 g (½ cup) granulated sugar
zest and juice of 1 lemon
300 g (2 ½ cups) plain flour (all purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
½ teaspoon sea salt
FOR THE LEMON GLAZE
85 g (¾ cup) powdered icing sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
lemon zest to decorate
METHOD
1. Heat oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F. Grease a 900g/2lb loaf tin and line with baking paper.
2. Coarsely grate the unpeeled raw courgettes (in a box grater or food processor). Lightly squeeze the gratings in a clean tea towel to remove a little of the moisture. (Keep courgette water to one side in case need to add some back to mixture).
3. In a large bowl, whisk the oil, flax, sugar, zest and juice together until smooth, then stir in the courgette. Sift in the flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt and gently combine.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 75 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin completely.
For the lemon drizzle
1. Mix the lemon juice and icing sugar together until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake and sprinkle with the lemon zest.
We filmed this in ‘portrait’ mode to see what it would come out like (we won’t do that again!). You should maximise it, otherwise it will appear really small in the middle of your screen.