Courgette and walnut cake

One would be forgiven for thinking I no longer baked judging by the rolling tumble weed on this blog, but look! Here's a cake I baked recently and remembered to photograph. 

Also, check out my beautiful ceramic kitchenaid mixer bowl which Santa gave me for Christmas (after some not so subtle hinting.) I love that it has a pouring spout and matches my 1950s pastel kitchen.

The cake is an adaption of the courgette and walnut layer cake from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days book, scaled down to a more manageable 2 layer cake. Three layer cakes look spectacular but I always feel they're more of an "occasion" cake to feed lots of people so I often admire but skim past those recipes. I'm far more likely to bake a standard 2 layer cake.

Over the past year I've been really into baking with greens. A strange statement admittedly but bear with me. I've had brilliant success baking with avocados in chocolate based recipes such as brownies and cookies. I've also made a lovely courgette and chocolate loaf and this courgette, coconut and lime cake which I've already documented here from a couple of years ago. I doubt I'm going to start putting broccoli or kale in cakes though, that may be a step too far.

Basically if you love carrot cake then you will also enjoy this courgette and walnut cake. It's the same textures and flavours but with the carrot swapped for courgette.

The big difference with this cake is the icing which is a cinnamon flavoured butter icing with Greek yoghurt as opposed to a cream cheese icing. I've never used yoghurt in icing before so was intrigued to try it out. It adds a slight tang, similar to using cream cheese and the finished icing had a beautiful, mousse-like texture. However, I don't think it has replaced my love for cream cheese icing. I think most of my cake eaters also preferred a cream cheese icing to this one but it was fun to try something different.

Courgette and walnut cake

Recipe adapted from Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days book 

Sponge:

2 large eggs

200ml sunflower oil

200g soft light brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour 

Heaped 1/2 tsp baking powder (to work out roughly as 2/3 tsp for recipe ratio)

Heaped 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (same as above.)

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

Pinch of ground mixed spice 

200g grated courgette (with excess moisture squeezed out.)

66g walnuts, chopped into small chunks

Icing: (I can't remember exactly, but this is roughly what I did)

175g butter

1 tsp ground cinnamon

250g -300g icing sugar

50g - 75g plain Greek yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 170C/ 150C fan/ 325F/ gas Mark 3. Grease and line 2 round 20cm/ 8 inch sandwich tins with baking parchment.

Whisk together the eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl for a couple of minutes until well combined.

In a separate bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and ground spices. Add this dry mixture to the wet egg mixture in two batches, mixing well after each addition. Mix until fully combined.

Stir in the grated courgettes and chopped walnuts then divide the cake batter into the two prepared cake tins.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes in the centre of the oven until risen, golden on top and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out to finish cooling on cooling racks.

To make the icing mix the butter, icing sugar and cinnamon together. Once fully combined add the yoghurt and keep mixing for around 5 minutes until the icing is light and fluffy.

Fill and top the cooled cakes with the icing and decorate with more walnut pieces.

courgette, coconut and lime cake

My first ever courgette cake. I've been wanting to make one of these for years and am kicking myself I didn't do it sooner. This is such a lovely cake.

A few weeks ago I came across a Nigella Lawson courgette cake recipe, and variations of it, at least three times within the space of a few days. I took it as a sign that I finally needed to try a courgette cake.

My cake is yet another (slight) variation. I mostly followed Jean's variation though of adding desiccated coconut and lime zest to the cake batter.

I think all versions I came across had used lemon curd as a filling, but I made a lime curd using a lovely recipe I recently found at Only Crumbs Remain. I wanted to enhance the lime flavour in the cake and just generally fancied making that curd! I also added lime zest to the cream cheese icing (no juice though) to fully ramp up the zingy flavour and general green appearance of the cake. I also added a little bit extra icing sugar to the icing to make it slightly firmer and topped the cake with toasted desiccated coconut.

Speaking of the green appearance, I loved all the green flecks from the courgette and lime in this cake. I'm aware green isn't generally considered an attractive colour for a cake, but I thought it looked really pretty.

The courgettes gave the cake a really lovely, soft texture and the lime curd tasted insanely good. Man I love a homemade curd! I only made half a batch but had plenty for this cake filling and enough extra to add to my plain yoghurt and fruit at breakfast for a few days. Yet again, ridiculously tasty alongside blueberries and chopped banana in yoghurt.

So if you're in any ways on the fence about courgette cake I say DO IT. If you already like carrot cake and citrus flavours then you won't regret making it.