Pistachio, Courgette and Lemon Cake

Weekend Treat [01]

I am not a culinary genius and I will never grace the series of The Great British Bake Off, but I do love cake. There’s a real foodie fad at the moment for eating clean, and I have several friends on no sugar no carb diets. I say, “hats off” to those who are self-controlled enough to stick by rules, but after one month of not eating cake I cracked because every so often I just need a little treat.

My father in-law is a gardener, so we’ve been lucky enough to have home-grown courgettes in abundance. So today I thought I’d let you know about this yummy, but slightly unusual, cake that I’ve been making our family recently. It’s from BBC Good Food August 2015 magazine.

ingredients

175g shelled pistachios

250g golden caster sugar

200g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

280g plain flour

1¼ tsp each baking powder and bicarbonate of soda

3 large eggs

140g Greek full fat yoghurt

zest and juice 3 lemons

140g coarsely grated courgette

175g icing sugar

2 tbsp lemon curd

1. Put 150g of the pistachios and the sugar in a food processor and wiz until the nuts are very finely ground.
2. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4, grease a 20 x 30cm cake tin and line the base with baking parchment. Tip the pistachio sugar into a big mixing bowl with the butter, flour, baking powder and bicarb, eggs, yoghurt and the zest and juice from 2 of the lemons. Beat with an electric whisk until smooth and combined.
3. Stir in the courgette until everything is well mixed, then scrape into the prepared tin. Bake for 35-40 mins until the cake is risen and golden, and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool.
4. When the cake has fully cooled, remove from the tin and peel off the baking parchment. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, and gradually stir in enough lemon juice to get a runny-ish consistency. If you run out of juice, carry on mixing with water. Drizzle thickly over the cake, and repeat with lemon curd, if you like. Roughly chop the remaining pistachios and scatter over the icing, along with the remaining lemon zest. Leave to set for 10 mins, then cut into squares and serve with Greek yoghurt.

They say it will keep for 3 days in an airtight tin, I challenge you to have any left after 3 days.

If you try out this recipe please let me know, I’d love to hear what you thought of it.