Food blogger Kat from The Baking Explorer tries out a delicious cake recipe from Veggie, a magazine bursting with inspiration for vegetarians. Find out how she got on below...
I have started to adapt a more vegetarian diet and my partner has been a vegetarian for 15 years, so I was excited when Veggie magazine arrived as I knew every single recipe in it would be vegetarian – I could make all of them for both of us! No editing needed. The magazine also contains gluten free, vegan friendly, and egg free recipes. Each recipe is clearly labelled with a code that tells you which diets it is suitable for, which I found really helpful. There is also more to the magazine than food, there’s also interviews, beauty products and clothes.
I chose to make this courgette cake as we’ve enjoyed courgette muffins before and I’m a huge fan of mascarpone icing! It’s also a great way to eat a vegetable that I’m not a huge fan of in savoury cooking. Once the cake is baked you can’t tell from the taste that there is courgette in it! I really liked the article it featured in too, which was all about growing your own fruit and veg. If you grow your own courgette this would be a fantastic recipe to use them in.
I started by preparing the courgette. I used a food processor to grate the vegetable until I had 400g of it, this was approximately 3 courgettes. I squeezed excess water out of it with my hands before weighing it. I grated the lemon zest into the courgette.
In a mixing bowl I creamed together the butter and caster sugar.
I added the eggs, one at a time, and I whisked the mixture between each addition.
Then I folded in the courgette and lemon zest.
I sieved the flour and baking powder, and mixed them in gently. Once fully mixed I poured the batter into a greased and lined 23” springform cake tin.
I baked the cake on 160C for 50 minutes. I checked it was done by using a skewer, when it came out clean the cake was ready. I left it to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then removed it and put it on a cooling rack to cool fully.
To make the icing I mixed together the mascarpone cheese and icing sugar. I spread it onto the cake using a palette knife.
I zested the lemon and lime and arranged the zest around the edge of the cake. It looked so pretty!
The cake was really moist and delicious, and the fresh mascarpone frosting was the perfect match. I reckon this is best way to eat vegetables!
Ingredients:
For the cake
400g grated courgette
180g butter
250g caster sugar
Zest of 2 lemons
350g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
For icing & garnish
250g mascarpone
130g icing sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lime
Preparation time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Serves: 10-12
For more culinary inspiration plus articles by top columnists and in-depth celebrity reviews, subscribe to Veggie magazine.
