Courgette Cake with Lime and Mascarpone Frosting

A light, delicious and not too sweet courgette cake flavoured with lime and optional rum soaked raisins. Two green-flecked sponges are sandwiched and topped with a lime flavoured mascarpone frosting. It makes a perfect late summer layer cake, ideal for alfresco dining.

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We have a courgette glut. I’m so excited. We haven’t managed to grow any courgettes since we moved. But now we have an allotment and a small veg patch in the garden and the courgettes are doing their thing.

A Courgette Glut

Courgettes (Cucurbita pepo) also known as zucchini, are a variety of summer squash. Once you get the plants established, they’re easy to look after and can produce quite prolifically. We’ve grown many varieties over the years, dark green ones, light green ones, yellow ones, stripy ones, round ones but my favourite are Striato di Napoli.

Striato di Napoli are not only pretty with their alternating light and dark green stripes, but they have a lovely flavour too. They’re quite firm and they stand up to cooking better than some courgette varieties do. By that, I mean they have a good texture when cooked and are less prone to going mushy.

What To Do With A Glut of Courgettes

If you grow your own courgettes, you’re most likely going to end up with a glut at some point. But what a treat. They’re so easy to prepare, they make summer cooking a breeze. I have several recipes which I rotate through the season. They’re all delicious and all quite different from each other. So there’s no danger of us getting bored.

Sadly, I haven’t yet managed to write up the recipes and put them on the blog. I do have a couple though. You’ll find those with a selection of courgette recipes from other bloggers further down the post. And of course, there’s my not to be missed courgette cake flavoured with lime. You’ll find the recipe for that further down the post too.

Soup is always a good standby. It freezes well, so you can cook up large batches of it, put it in portion sized containers and pop them in the freezer. Come the late autumn when the nights get chilly, you’ll have some warming ready meals to remind you of those balmy summer days.

If you’ve really got more courgettes than you can cope with, your friends and neighbours will no doubt be delighted to take some off your hands.

Courgette Cake

This courgette cake is incredibly easy to make. It’s very quick too. This is because there’s no butter involved, so no need to cream butter and sugar together. Instead I use oil, so apart from grating the courgette, the rest pretty much involves mixing everything together.

It’s a fabulous cake for flavour and texture too. I haven’t made it in a long time, so CT was absolutely delighted when I baked one last weekend. It’s one of his favourite cakes.

It’s made with wholemeal spelt flour. Follow the link to find out why this is my flour of choice for cake baking. I haven’t tried it with ordinary wholemeal, but as long as you remember to sieve out the largest pieces of bran, it should still work well and be just as delicious.

I use a microplane* for citrus grating. Since I acquired one, I’ve never looked back. They’re so easy to use and clean and they don’t take up too much room either. It’s just perfect for the job of zesting the lime for both the cake and mascarpone frosting.

When it comes to grating the courgette, I use a box grater*. This is because it doesn’t take very long and there’s less fuss and mess than using a food processor.

I have some oddly sized silicone baking pans* that I use for this recipe, they’re 21 cm in diameter rather than 20 cm. So the cakes are a little flatter than they would be in a 20 cm cake tin and they only took 25 minutes to bake. In the recipe below, I’ve given baking times for 20 cm tins, which are a standard size and a lot easier to get hold of.

Lime Mascarpone Frosting

This mascarpone frosting flavoured with lime is absolutely dreamy. It’s one of those fillings and toppings that you’re hard pressed not to wolf down before ever it hits the cake. Or so I’m told. Unlike buttercream, it’s not overly sweet and the tartness from the lime juice cuts through any sweetness there is, so you end up with a light creamy frosting that’s not at all cloying. As a grand finale, there’s also a little lime zest to lift it and give it a few green flecks to reflect the flecked courgette cake upon which it sits.

Mascarpone cheese is a complete delight in itself, it’s just so rich and creamy. You could use another cream cheese for this recipe, but it won’t be quite as luscious. It’s very high in calories though, so a little goes a long way. You’ll find you only need thin layers to fill and frost the top.

It’s ever so easy to make. All you need to do is stir everything together and it’s good to go almost immediately.

There is one caveat, if you use the lime and mascarpone frosting, the cake won’t last very long. You’ll need to keep it in the fridge or a cool place if you want it to last more than a day.

Edible Flowers

There’s nothing quite like edible flowers to make a cake look pretty. When I can find anything suitable in the garden, I’ll add them. I strew a few anise hyssop flowers over the top of this courgette cake.

But please do be wary with flowers. Not all garden flowers are edible. Indeed some of them are highly toxic. So do ensure your flowers are of the edible variety before you use them.

Courgette Cake. PIN IT.

Courgette Cake – The Recipe

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