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.

carrot, coconut and lime cake

I was flicking through my baking books one sleepless night last month when I came across this recipe and thought it would be a nice cake to bake for Father's Day. My Dad loves carrot cake, coconut and lime flavours, and I'm a fan of trying new carrot cake recipes. Everyone's a winner!

This is the most summery carrot cake I've ever baked or eaten. The coconut and lime make it so light, fresh and zingy; totally different to the more traditional spiced carrot cake with darker sugar and nuts. Although I'm probably still more of a fan of the latter this was a lovely, refreshing change. I particularly enjoyed the lime in the cream cheese icing. I always forget how much I like lime.

It's worth noting that the icing tasted very butter-heavy. Although I didn't mind it I'd feel tempted to change the icing ingredient ratios if making again.

I made a couple of ingredient substitutions due to what I had in the cupboard and what I could get from the local shop. The original recipe uses shredded coconut, which I imagine would add great texture to the cake but I could only get desiccated coconut. As you can see this worked fine too. I toasted some of the desiccated coconut for decoration on top and made way too much so expect to see more coconut on the blog!

Carrot, coconut and lime cake

Recipe very mildly adapted from National Trust "Traditional Teatime Recipes" book by Jane Pettigrew.

cake:
2 large eggs
100g (4oz) soft light brown sugar (I used a mixture of muscovado and caster sugar as that's what I had in the cupboard)
75ml (3fl oz) sunflower oil
175g (6oz) grated carrot
100g (4oz) self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50g (2oz) desiccated coconut

icing:
75g (3oz) full fat cream cheese
75g (3oz) slightly salted butter
50g (2oz) icing sugar
grated rind of one lime

topping:
grated rind of one lime and some toasted desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 190C/170C Fan/375F/Gas mark 5. Grease and line a 18cm/7 inch round tin with baking parchment. In a large bowl with an electric whisk beat together the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the oil and mix again well. Fold in the remaining ingredients until everything is combined then pour into the prepared cake tin and level the top. 

Bake in the middle of the oven for 35-40 minutes until golden, risen and a cake skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. My cake was ready at 33 minutes, so I suggest keeping an eye on it after 30 minutes has passed. Leave to cool on a wire cooling rack.

For the icing, beat together the icing sugar and butter for a few minutes until light and creamy, then add in the cream cheese and lime rind. Mix again until well combined then spread over the fully cooled cake. Decorate the cake with more grated lime and some toasted desiccated coconut.

coconut and lime drizzle dinosaurs

Admittedly there isn't a huge amount of coconut in this recipe, but there's enough to give a bit of flavour and texture so I felt it was worth including in the title.

But you're not here to question the coconut content are you? You're here because you're excited about dinosaur shaped cakes. DINOSAUR SHAPED CAKES.

Remember the super cool 3D dinosaur biscuit cutters  my friend gave me for Christmas? Well the same friend gave me silicone dinosaur shaped moulds for my birthday last year. She's awesome like that.

Although I have used these a few times, this is the first they've made it on to the blog. Tasty, bite sized dinosaurs sneaking into people's mouths, unphotographed. How dare they!

There was a lonely lime sitting in the fruit bowl this week which presented me with the perfect opportunity for dainty dino drizzle cakes. Drizzle cakes are perfect for little moulds like these as there's no icing to spoil the definition. Ideally I would have preferred two limes as I like my drizzle cakes quite punchy with citrus flavour, but one lime worked fine. 

I added desiccated coconut into the mix as I fancied another flavour and discovered that I *still* had a bag of coconut in the baking cupboard left over from the chocolate and coconut cake I made back in January. I've been working my way through the desiccated coconut stash throughout the year but thought I had finally come to an end last month. Nope. I have no idea what I was thinking buying so much coconut, but I am determined to use it all!

Coconut and lime drizzle dinosaurs

Makes 8 dinosaurs, or a tray of cupcakes, or a loaf. Remember to adjust baking times if you're making a loaf!

 

cake:

125g margarine

125g caster sugar

2 large eggs

zest of 1 lime

100g self-raising flour

25g desiccated coconut

lime syrup/drizzle:

juice of 1 lime

30-50g caster sugar (depends how sweet you want it. I guessed!) 

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Spray your moulds with cake release spray and coat with a light dusting of flour (or grease and line your cake tin.) Beat the sugar and margarine together until light and fluffy. Add the first egg and beat well. Put a spoonful of the flour in with the second egg to stop the mixture from splitting. Mix together. Add the lime zest, desiccated coconut and remaining flour and mix until everything is fully combined.

Spoon the mixture  into the dinosaur moulds until 2/3 full and bake on a tray in the oven for 25-30 minutes until well risen, light golden and springy to touch. Just as your cakes are about to come out the oven, combine the lime juice and sugar in a small saucepan. Stir over a gentle heat, allowing some of the sugar to dissolve. Don't let it boil though. 

Leave the cakes to cool in the moulds for a minute before inverting onto a wire rack then immediately pour the warm lime syrup on top of each dinosaur. I sprinkled on a little extra caster sugar as I thought it looked pretty! 

mango chai latte cupcakes and mango lime curd

Perhaps 2013 is my year for baking with different fruit. First passionfruits and now mangoes.

This bake came about when Drink Me Chai offered me some instant chai tea latte powders to play with. They have a great selection to choose from, but I was immediately intrigued by the mango flavour. I had no idea you could get mango flavoured chai latte!

When I decided on incorporating the instant chai powder into a cupcake, I fancied making a mango based curd as a filling. After some searching online I went with a mango lime curd recipe found on My Darling Lemon Thyme and it produced 3 full Bonne Maman sized jars of curd, so unless you want to go curd mad I would suggest halving the ingredients. I should also warn you that sieving mango puree is time consuming and so boring but it is worth doing.

Half of my cupcake batch were filled with the mango lime curd, also mixing it into the butter icing, and the other half were left plain with a mango chai latte flavoured butter icing.

It's hard to pick a winner. The curd batch had an extra punch of fruitiness, really pulling out the mango flavour, whereas the other batch were all about the chai latte flavour. I particularly enjoyed the creamy, spiced quality in the latter's icing. Despite my fondness for curds, I think I liked the more chai-ified (I'm making it a word) batch, but this is only if you're holding me at gun point to decide. I will happily eat tray-loads of either cupcake.

I also tried the mango chai as a drink and needless to say I loved it. The sweet, tropical fruitiness really comes through the warm spices. The powder can also be mixed with hot water instead of milk but I found the flavour disappointing as a water-based drink. Similar to water-based hot chocolates, they just lack that wonderfully indulgent sweetness and comfort you get with a milky drink. I always think if you're going to have a treat, do it properly!

And yes that's a new cake stand I picked up from my Glasgow travels two weeks ago. Is it possible to own too many three tier cake stands? (Humour me, please say no.)

Mango chai cupcakes

makes roughly 18 cupcakes

225g Stork margarine

225g caster sugar

225g eggs (I used three large duck eggs, but 4 normal hen eggs should weigh roughly the same)

2 tbsp instant mango chai latte powder from DrinkMeChai

2 tbsp milk

200g self-raising flour

1 jar of mango lime curd

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160/Gas 4 and line cupcakes trays with cases. Beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add each egg one at a time, beating between each addition, and adding a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from curdling. Mix together the chai powder and milk and add to the mixture. Sift in the remaining flour and mix everything together until fully incorporated. 

Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases, filling each one 2/3 full. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until well risen and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the trays for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
 

For the curd version, cut a hollow into the centre of each cupcakes (I just use a knife) and fill with a teaspoon of mango lime curd before replacing the top. Mix some of the curd into a standard butter icing (one part butter to two parts icing). I think I used 150g icing sugar, 75g butter and two teaspoons of curd to cover 8 cupcakes.
 

For the straight forward mango chai version, top each cupcake with butter icing flavoured with some of the instant chai powder. Once again I used a standard butter icing, but added some chai powder to taste along with a splash of milk until I was happy with the consistency.

Spread the icing on in a child-like fashion (like me) or pipe in swirls using a fancy nozzle, such as a wilton 1M or 2D.
 

Disclaimer: I was kindly sent products to bake with by Drink Me Chai. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Yoghurt, lemon and lime bundt

It's a sad evening when only half of your bundt comes out of the tin.

My gut instinct was to leave it in the tin until completely cold, but the recipe said to leave for 15-20 minutes before turning out. Hmmmm.

I assumed I had to turn it out sooner due to the sugar syrup being poured over the top while the cake was still hot. Perhaps the sugar would have stuck to the tin if I left it to cool? Only thing is, the syrup never really soaked in through the sponge, and left the top (or bottom? since it's a bundt) a bit soggy.

Flavour and texture-wise, this is not a bad cake. The yoghurt gives the cake a soft, mooth texture and cool, creamy flavour, and although it is a shame the syrup didn't soak through the whole cake, the (soggy) crust is full of citrus tang.

Personally I like when a cake really packs a citrus punch, so I'm not sure I fully love the yoghurt addition as I feel it almost dulls the lemon/lime flavour. However this really is a personal preference; some may really enjoy the yoghurt addition and it certainly hasn't stopped me from eating a lot of this cake.

Yoghurt, lemon and lime bundt cake
Recipe from Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook by Lynn Hill

375g self-raising flour
500g caster sugar
grated zest of 2 lemons
grated zest of 1 lime
250ml natural yoghurt
250ml sunflower oil
2 large eggs

syrup:
juice of 2 lemons
juice of 1 lime
3 tbsp caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5 (I must admit I thought that sounded to high a heat for a large bundt and actually turned it down to Gas 4.) Thoroughly grease and flour a 2.5-3 litre bundt tin, tapping out any excess flour over the sink.

Sift together the flour, sugar and citrus zests in one bowl. In a different bowl beat together the yoghurt, oil and eggs before adding to the other bowl and mixing everything together. Spoon the mixture into your bundt tin, spreading it out evenly, then bake in the centre of the oven for 45-50 minutes (although mine took an extra 15-20 minutes, probably because I had it baking at a lower temperature) until well risen, golden and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

To make the syrup, put the lemon and lime juice into a small saucepan along with the sugar. Stir together over a medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. The recipe states to spoon the syrup over the cake when the cake is fresh out of the oven, leaving it to soak into the cake between additions and to remove from the tin after 15-20 minutes. However I would perhaps only pour half of the syrup over the cake whilst hot, wait half an hour or so until the cake is warm to turn it out and brush the remaining syrup over the cake so that it gets an even coating/soaking.

Raspberry and blueberry lime drizzle cake

This is summer in cake form. It's the sort of cake I can imagine eating outside in the sunshine, probably whilst swatting flies away and running away from bumble bees, but that destroys the dreamy picnic image.

This is a zingy, juicy, refreshing cake. I loved the combination of fruity flavours: sharp bursts of raspberry, sweet hits of blueberry and tangy lime.

Surprising for some perhaps, but I've never baked with limes before! If you're not such a fan of lemon drizzle, you may actually prefer lime as it has the tang but without such a sharp, sour hit as lemon.

Only three berries managed to stay near the surface of this cake! The rest all sank to the bottom, despite coating them in flour before adding to the batter, but thankfully they didn't form a soggy mush.

This is definitely on the to-bake-again list, I love a good drizzle cake! The recipe can be found here on BBC Good Food. My changes to the recipe were:

I baked the cake in a 9" round cake tin instead of a 8" square.

I only added 1-2 tbsp of lime juice to the batter as I felt it already had a good dropping consistency.

I only had three limes so was a couple of tablespoons short of juice for the syrup but I was perfectly happy with my results so I don't think an extra is necessary.


On a separate note, is anyone else experiencing problems uploading photographs to Blogger? After reading advice on the troubleshooting section I disabled pop-ups on Blogger which allowed me to upload this post but it still put up a fight. ARGH! Technology.