I made this cake recently for a friend's birthday.
It's an adaptation of a recipe which I've used before and you can see here. On that occasion (two years ago) I was using up a glut of courgettes but this year we have none at all, which is very sad indeed.
Last year's wasn't a great harvest either, largely because during a spring storm the wind blew over two of our four plants, the green ones, and broke the tops off. Luckily the other two plants gave a reasonable supply of small yellow courgettes. This year we were in the UK drowning our sorrows in Italian rosé wine at the time when we should have been planting courgette plants in our French garden.
Fortunately we have friends who have some to give away so we're not going entirely without courgettes this year.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to taste the cake after I had given it away. Good for my lockdown waistline but it would have been nice to be able to verify that it tasted as good as my friend said. It may seem odd to post about a cake that I haven't actually tasted but it wouldn't be the first time! The main reason is that so I can remember how I made it for next time. It's a further adaptation of Nigella Lawson's recipe for "Flora's courgette cake", adding some coconut instead of the dried fruit.
I made the cake again, just to check it was good.
It was!
Ingredients
250g courgettes, unpeeled
2 large eggs
125ml sunflower oil
150g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda½ tsp baking powder
50g desiccated coconut
zest of 1 lime*
For the topping and filling
2-3 tblsp lemon curd**
zest and juice of 1 lime*
100g cream cheese
50g butter, softened
50g icing sugar
Method
Grease and line the bases of two 20cm sponge tins. Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.
Wipe the courgettes clean with damp kitchen paper and grate them, unpeeled, using the course side of a box grater. Squeeze small handfuls of the grated courgettes and place in a sieve over a bowl to allow any more liquid to drip out.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs, oil and sugar with an electric whisk until light and creamy. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and bicarb and beat again to combine. Stir in the courgettes, coconut and lime zest until well blended.
Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake for 30 minutes until firm and golden brown. Cool in the tin for five minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
While the cakes are cooling, put the lemon curd into a small bowl and mix well with a dash of lime juice to sharpen it if needed**. Set aside.
In another bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth, beat in the butter and icing sugar and a dash of lime juice to taste. Refrigerate until needed.
When the cakes are cold, place one of them on a plate or stand and spread with the lemon curd. Place the other on top and spread with the cream cheese topping. Sprinkle a few strands of lime zest over to decorate. Add a few edible flowers for decoration if you like.
Cuts into 8-10 slices.
*the unused lime juice can be used to make margaritas which would go well with a slice of this cake!
**the jar of lemon curd I used, French from SuperU, seemed already quite sharp to me so I didn't add any lime juice to it.
