Pistachio, lime and courgette cake.
BEWARE: this recipe is NOT HEALTHY WHATSOEVER. It is very yummy though 😉
Sooo… we started a bake-off at work a while back and even though I didn’t initially sign up, I couldn’t help but join in late. The cakes everyone makes are amazing and I thought I’d give it a go. I generally don’t really bake many things – too dangerous!
To try it out I made half of the recipe a couple of days early and amended a few things. However only after making the final one I found out that I put in waaay to much oil (I weighed it instead of measuring it… rookie mistake!). They were still super delicious btw but I would recommend trying to follow amount in the original recipe to start with!
I found a couple of recipes and went for an easy looking one that didn’t need a billion ingredients here. And used the recipe for the cream-cheese frosting I found elsewhere on the web (I have no idea where..)
Ingredients (1 cake, serves 10-ish people)
The cake
- 75ml of vegetable oil (is NOT equal to 75 grams ;))
- 125 grams of self-raising flour
- 40-ish grams of pistachio nuts
- 1,5 – 2 medium eggs
- 90 grams of caster sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1/4 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
- 110 grams of coarsely grated courgettes
Cream cheese frosting
- 200 grams of full fat Philadelphia cream cheese
- 100 grams of icing sugar
- 0,5 – 1 lime (for juice and zest)
- 3 tbs pistachio nuts (or however many you need to cover the top nicely)
How to bake
- Pre-heat the oven to about 180 degrees.
- To prepare:
– grease the tin and dust it with some flour
– pulse/chop the pistachio nuts (I tried using my new food processor but found it made bits of it almost like dust while other bits hadn’t even been touched yet, so I prefer chopping them myself)
– grate and weigh the courgettes - Whisk the oil, eggs, sugar and vanilla.
- Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda over the top and stir to combine.
- Mix in the courgettes and pistachios. And add a bit of lime zest!
- Transfer the mixture to the tin and level the surface.
- Bake the cake for about 35 minutes or until it is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean (I prefer to use the latter method).
- Leave to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes then release it from the tin by sticking a knife in between the tin and the cake (gently!) and turning the tin upside down.
- Turn your cake the right side up and let it cool on a rack.
- While the cake is cooling down (this takes at least an hour – if you want to speed it up, slice the cake horizontally in half) start making the frosting.
- Beat the cream cheese until smooth.
- Add sieved icing sugar and stir in the lime to taste. (I used the juice of about half a lime and zest of at least half a lime to bring out the taste a bit more!)
- If you have not done so yet: slice the cake horizontally and start spreading out the the cream cheese frosting on the bottom half. If needed: slice a bit off the top half as well to make it a bit more flat (I didn’t mind mine was still a bit domed after that but you might want to take the main bulk off like me. Makes applying the icing easier as well). Use about half of the mixture and spread it out evenly.
- When done, put the other half of cake on top of it and use the remaining cream cheese frosting to ice the top.
- Scatter the nuts on top (ideally just before serving to keep them crispy, but there is not a lof of harm in doing it a while before that).
- Enjoy the sugar rush! 😉
Additional notes
- I used way more pistachios than what was ‘prescribed’ in the original recipe so feel free to use less. I just really like a nutty cake 😀
- I won and am through to the next round! I do have to say, the competition was fierce as she made the British favourite; Scones with cream, jam and butter.
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