Courgette Cake
Courgette season is now in full swing, some days we are eating them for lunch and dinner! This is a lovely cake from The Pioneer Woman although I have halved the amount of icing as I found that was all that was needed to generously cover the cake. I also used a 1/3 cup less sugar than the original recipe as the icing makes the cake very sweet anyway.
For the cake:
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cups granulated sugar (original recipe was 1/3 cup more)
1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups grated, unpeeled courgette, using the smallest blade on the grater
(around four courgettes)
For the icing:
This is half the amount of the original recipe.
4oz cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons salted butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 splash of milk
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1.Preheat the oven to 180degrees celsius.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, pecans, coconut, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg and ginger.
3. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, vanilla and eggs.Put the grated courgette in a clean tea towel and squeeze out most of the water, then stir it into the wet mixture.
4. Fold into the dry ingredients bowl. The batter will be stiff and dry, but keep folding it and it will all come tog the batter into the prepared pan.
6. Bake until a skewer that has been inserted into the centre of the cake, comes out with moist crumbs and the cake is pulling away from the sides of the pan. This should take about 20minutes.
7. Cool completely on a wire rack.
ICING:
8. Beat the cream cheese and butter in a large bowl with a mixer at a medium speed, until smooth.
9. Beat in the powdered sugar and vanilla just until smooth. Add milk if necessary.
10. Spread the icing on top of the cooled cake.
11. Garnish the top with the chopped pecans.
