Rebecca’s Recipe of the Week: Another Tea-Time Treat | Canalside Community Food

If you like carrot cake you will enjoy this variation. It’s spicy with fresh ginger, and sticky with a lemony glaze.

Courgette Cake with Crunchy Lemon Glaze

Ingredients
1 US cup measure = 8 fluid ounces.

For the Cake:
1 cup plain flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
zest of one lemon
3 eggs
1.5 cups sugar
1 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2.5 cups finely-shredded courgette (that’s about 2 medium-sized Canalside courgettes)
1 cup ground almonds

For the Glaze:
1 cup icing sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Preparation
Heat the oven to 180. Grease a cake pan, and dust it with flour. I used a fancy tubular bundt pan that holds about 2.5l. You could also bake it in two loaf pans, in which case you’ll need to reduce the baking time a bit.

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and dry spices aside from the nutmeg, which probably won’t fit through the grater. Add the nutmeg, fresh ginger and lemon zest, and mix.

Put the eggs, sugar and olive oil into a mixer and beat on medium speed for 10 minutes. Stop periodically to scrape down the sides. Add the vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients and mix well for about a minute. Stir in the ground almonds and shredded courgette.

Turn the batter into the cake pan and bake for between 50 minutes to over an hour. (If you’re baking this two loaf pans instead of one large bundt pan you should start testing after about 40 minutes.) It is done when a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake is baking prepare the glaze: sift the icing sugar and stir in the granulated sugar and lemon juice. Note that this makes A LOT of glaze, and results in a very sweet, sticky, moist cake. If this is all a bit much, make half the amount.

Let cake cool for 10 minutes, then carefully remove it from the pan. Brush the warm cake with the glaze and leave to cool before eating.

(Recipe adapted from http://www.davidlebovitz.com/zucchini-cake-with-crunchy-lemon/)