Courgette Cake

Member's Recipe: Courgette Cake

60 g raisins (optional)

250g courgettes (2-3)
2 large eggs

125ml vegetable oil

150g caster sugar

225g self raising flour

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

2x21 cm sandwich tins

Icing

200g cream cheese

100g icing sugar

juice of lime

Method

If using raisins, place in a bowl of boiled water to plump up.

Put the eggs, oil and sugar into a bowl and beat until creamy. Sieve in the flour, bicarb and baking powder and beat until well combined. Grate in the courgettes (wipe them first but don’t peel). Add the raisins. Pour the mixture into the lined, greased tins and bake for 30 mins at 180 C/gas mark 4 (I have quite a hot oven so mine normally takes about 20 mins at 170 C– you just want the cakes to be browned and for a skewer to come out clean). Couldn’t be easier.

To make the cream cheese icing, beat the cream and the icing sugar until smooth. Add the lime juice.

The recipe suggests a lime curd filling, with the icing/cream cheese for the top. I didn’t do that (laziness on my part) but here’s the recipe should you want it.

Lime Curd

75g unsalted butter

3 large eggs

75g caster sugar
Juice of approx 4 limes

Zest of 1 lime

Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan, add all the other ingredients and whisk to a custard over a gentle heat. Let cool before filling the cake. The recipe suggests that if the lime curd needs firming up, just place the cake in the fridge for a while.

Linda James