A glut in waiting
I am beginning to think of myself as almost a real allomenteer (is that a word?) or veg grower as I have my first glut – courgettes.
It’s hardly surprising given that I have three courgette plants and it is really only me that eats them, although I do adore them and eat enough for two. I have been wondering what to do with the excess as even I, a keen courgette consumer. cannot keep up with the quantity being produced. So I have a two prong approach – both experimental for me.
The first prong is to try to freeze some courgette to use later in the year. Apparently you need to shred it, squeeze the moisture out (sprinkling with salt and applying a weight to grated courgette in a sieve seems to be the recommended approach) and then freeze in batches ready for using in stews and sauces etc in the winter.
The second prong of my plan has caused a few raised eyebrows in my home – courgette cake. I can’t see what the fuss is about. It is no different to carrot cake and I remember eating courgette (or zucchini) cake when I was in Australia years back. I had a mooch around the internet and this is the recipe I decided to follow although there are lots of variations out there. My recipe is from the foodiesite which seems to be a very useful resource.
Courgette Cake
Ingredients
250g butter, broken into pieces
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
350g self raising flour
juice and zest of 1 orange
1 tsp cinnamon
half tsp mixed spice
350g courgette, grated
50g walnuts, roughly chopped
50g sultanas
- Grease and line either a 25cm diameter cake tin or two 20cm cake tins. Preheat oven to 180 C
- Cream the sugar and butter. Add the beaten eggs gradually mixing until the mixture is creamy and fluffy
- Sieve the flour with the spice and fold in a third, followed by half the orange juice and zest and repeat until all the ingredients are well incorporated.
- Stir in walnuts, sultanas and courgette
- Pour into cake tins and cook for 1 hour until firm to the touch (if you are using two 20cm cake tins reduce the cooking time by 30-40mins)
- Turn out on to a rack and cool
I think the cake would be quite nice as it is but you can add to it with icing, although be warned this is a pretty sickly icing.
Ingredients for icing
125g cream cheese
50g unsalted butter
300g icing sugar (I ended up adding more to get the consistency I wanted)
juice and zest of quarter orange
Beat the cream cheese and butter together until creamy. Gradually beat in the icing sugar and orange juice and zest until you have a smooth creamy icing. You can use this to sandwich together the two smaller cakes or to ice the top of the big cake.
The general consensus, even from my non-courgette eating son was that it was good cake!!
I am now going to investigate recipes for my next expected glut – squashes!!
Helen, I make Zuccini ‘bread’ often. This looks very similar to the recipe I use.
For freezing, you do not HAVE to go through all those steps. I have sucessfully frozen them sliced or large dice on a cookie sheet and when frozen store in freezer bag. When wanted, simply sautee from frozen state. Still delicious!
That looks so yummy – bring on “taste” vision
Do not mention the word courgette! Have just picked five today ~ I am off to visit my mum for a few days so will palm them off on her. The cake looks seriously delicious.
I am extremely grateful that the household is unanimous in loving courgette cake – even with the many and various other ways I have of eating them (gratin, roast, mushed with lemon and garlic on toast, griddled and turned in to salad with chilli, garlic and mint, well, you get the idea) I need them to like cake! Enjoy the fruits of your labours
So courgette is like zucchini? I never heard of courgette before and if I find them will make the cake. It looks really good in your photo. I do like carrot and zucchini as a baked confection.
A friend gave me a recipe for Courgette/Zucchini muffins – I must dig it out and get it on my blog as I too have the annual courgette fest. I solve some of my problem by bagging them up and taking them to work for colleagues who do not grow vegetables, they are always well received. I think I’ll try your cake recipe though and take that to work and await the comments; I’m also going to try freezing them in large chunks for use in winter dishes.
I often make courgette cakes in bulk in the Summer when Courgettes are plentiful then freeze them. They freeze well. Rattouille is another option.
Thanks Bridget – hadnt thought of freezing the cake so I will now make at least one more and pop it in the freezer
Looks delicious.
The courgettes look perfect, no blemishes or anything. It must have hard slicing into them.
Are you sure those are courgettes? I’ve seen long green ones, long yellow ones, spherical green ones but not round yellow ones before. What sort are they? I think I am the only person ever not to have a courgette glut!
Arabella – those are squashes – the glut to come after the courgettes
That looks great – can I have some?
I posted loads of courgette glut recipes on my Open Garden blog (seems like a lifetime ago) and like you posted one for courgette cake. The version I have is one from where I last worked and is yummy. They used lemon in the buttercream filling and didn’t bother with icing the top – it made it much easier to eat at the desk!
Sandra – thanks for the top about freezing courgettes, I will give that a go too
gagarden – courgette is the same as zuchinni – its what we call zuchinni in the UK
Ah…courgettes. So many courgettes and never enough recipes. A recipe that starts with “take 1 small courgette” is never going to cut it
French. Italian. English would be baby marrows.
The cake looks yummy. I don’t have a courgette glut, but the cake looks so good I may go and buy some. I think I might try it out at my open day!