Chocolate and Courgettes (Zucchini)
July 11th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Courgettes are innocent enough looking when they first arrive
- but soon they expand and take over your life like triffids. Beware the courgette.
Mini courgettes, waiting to strike
Little did I know when I took delivery of my spiffing Rocket Garden of baby veg plants in April that it would be the courgettes that were the real trouble makers. They were so innocent, with just one or two oval leaves – looking no larger than any of the other plants, and much smaller than the strawberries, for instance. The directions recommended a distance of 45cm between plantings, which is more or less what they now have, but they now seem so large that they tower over the long since bolted lettuces and shriveled brown pea plants.
The full size courgette plant, on Flickr
Courgette gluts are a gardening cliché, but with good reason – once they start producing, they don’t stop, and if you leave them for more than two days without checking, you will turn around to find a marrow has appeared.
So far the production has been a pleasant trickle – two or three courgettes every 4 or 5 days is very manageable, and can easily be converted into pasta – linguine, lemon juice, parmesan, oiive oil – or substitute for aubergine in a parmigiana.
However, we are now well into production on all four of my plants, so it’s more like 4 courgettes every other day. Serious help is clearly needed.
So when my mother-in-law asked me yesterday if I had any good courgette cake recipes, it occured to me that in fact I had the perfect one, but hadn’t tried it yet. I am referring, of course, to Chocolate and Zucchini cake from Clotilde’s Chocolate and Zucchini
Having once made a Jamie Oliver beetroot cake that was a disaster, I am wary of baked goods with vegetables in, but I have complete faith in Clotilde and I knew she would not lead me astray. And so it proved: as she notes in the book, if you didn’t tell anyone this had courgettes in, they would never tell. It’s just a really soft, moist chocolate cake, not too sweet. In fact, it could probably bear icing with something like buttercream and still be good. Even the olive oil I used in place of butter (as she suggests) is all but undetectable. So if you have courgette problems this summer, simply make endless batches of this and freeze where necessary.
Chocolate and Zucchini cake
Adapted, just barely, from Clotilde Dusoulier’s ‘Chocolate & Zucchini’
Ingredients
- 240g plain flour
- 60g cocoa
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 180g light brown sugar
- 120ml extra virgin olive oil
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp instant coffee granules or instant espresso powder
- 350g courgettes (zucchini), grated – about 2 medium courgettes
- 150g chocolate chips or chunks
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F.
Put the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl and use a whisk to mix everything together thoroughly and distribute the baking powder and bicarbonate.
Put the olive oil and sugar into a mixer bowl or food processor and combine for 3 or 4 minutes until thoroughly mixed together. It won’t cream as butter and sugar would, and may form clumps – don’t worry. Add the eggs one at a time, and mix thoroughly after each one, until the mixture is smooth again.
Add the vanilla and coffee granules or powder to the egg mixture.
Meanwhile grate the courgettes fairly finely – I used the grating disc on my food processor, but it wouldn’t take too long with a hand grater.
Add just over half of the flour mixture to the eggs and very gently mix until the flour hasn’t quite disappeared.
Toss the remaining flour with the grated courgettes and chocolate chips to coat them.
Add this on top of the rest of the batter, and fold together gently with a large spoon or spatula.
Pour into a greased or lined tin.
I used a 2lb (large) loaf tin and 6 muffin cases. Clotilde recommended a 25cm springform tin. You could also do them all as cupcakes, which I’m guessing would make around 18.
Bake at 180°C (160°C fan)/350°F for about 20 minutes for the cupcakes, and 45 minutes for the loaf cake.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin. If you use a springform tin, unclip the outside at 10 minutes, but leave in the tin to cool completely.
The cupcakes are especially good when they’re still a little warm.
Cake – a quest for an everyday muffin
March 21st, 2010 § 3 Comments
I’ve been in denial, but now I need to accept that I have a problem and address it. I like cake.
I make cake at home, I share it with friends. I bake birthday cakes for people. I think most of the cakes I make are better than those that I buy.
And yet, I buy far too many expensive, mediocre cakes and biscuits during the week at work.
THIS HAS GOT TO STOP.
You see, the problem is that I tell myself I don’t need cake in the week, that it’s just for dessert and occasional weekend treats. But this is not true. I eat some form of cake, biscuit or pastry every day, often twice a day. So what I should really do is make my own cakes, try and make them as healthy as I can, with whole grains and fruit in, and take them with me to work, so that I won’t buy the Paul Pain au Chocolat, the Eat Banana cake or the Pret Flapjack thing. (I might have to stick with the Leon Lemon and Ginger cake for a while, just until I figure out the recipe).
The first step then, was to bake some muffins, which freeze very happily, are very accommodating of modification, and fill that mid-morning gap perfectly.
Gordon Ramsay has a nice recipe for blueberry muffins in his ‘Healthy Appetite’
And then, I was reading Eggbeater, and came across this description by shuna of a muffin she had made for the weekend pastry basket at 10 Downing Street (the New York restaurant where she works):
” buckwheat-banana-walnut-coffee-candied ginger muffin”
Doesn’t that sound amazing? I knew I had to give it a go.
So I started with the Gordon Ramsay recipe and modified it. Unfortunately my modifications weren’t bold enough the first time. The coffee made the dough convincingly brown, but didn’t contribute much to the flavour. The ginger appeared when you got a nugget of candied ginger, but otherwise was quiet. So I tried again, and increased the quantities of flavouring, adding the ginger syrup, and more coffee. I ended up with a great flavourful muffin. The bitter flavours of the coffee and walnuts balance the sugar and bananas to make a not-to-sweet breakfast muffin. The walnuts and demerara give crunch and the bananas keep the whole thing moist. And I get to tell myself that its entirely healthful, so I can tuck in every day of the week.
Ginger coffee walnut banana muffins
| Introduction
Based on a single line from Shuna Fish Lydon: “ buckwheat-banana-walnut-coffee-candied ginger muffin”. The recipe is adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for blueberry muffins in ‘Healthy Appetite’. This is a great breakfast muffin, because the bitter flavours of the coffee and walnuts balance the bananas and sugar to make sure it is not too sweet. |
Tips
You can freeze bananas when they are ripe, even all brown, for baking with later. They will go very squashy, but that doesn’t matter if you’re going to mash them up anyway. Flour develops gluten when it comes into contact with liquid – the protein that makes bread strong and elastic. If this develops in muffins, it makes them seem tough and chewy, so minimise the gluten by keeping the dry and wet ingredients separate until the last minute, and by then mixing gently together until they are just combined. |
Ingredients
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Method
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