Recipe: Garden Cake
This garden cake celebrates any of the fruits and vegetables that are in season or lying around.
Recipe: Extracted from Alice in Cakeland by Alice Taylor, photography by Lottie Hedley and Melanie Jenkins.
Serves: 8–10
You can use this recipe to make a classic carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Or you can use zucchini, beetroot, parsnip, apple — whatever you have and would enjoy. My favourite is the combination I have used below: zucchini and carrot, with a touch of fennel.
INGREDIENTS
½ cup grated zucchini
1 cup grated carrot
1 cup neutral oil — I use canola
1 cup caster sugar
zest of 1 lemon
4 eggs
2¼ cups self-raising flour
pinch of ground fennel, optional
pinch of ground ginger, optional
1 recipe More than Whipped Cream
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) fan-bake. Grease and line a 21 cm (8¼ in) cake tin.
Place the zucchini in a Chux cloth or tea towel and squeeze out as much of the liquid as possible.
In a bowl, whisk together the zucchini, carrot, oil, sugar, lemon zest and eggs. Add the flour and the fennel and ginger, if using, and whisk until just combined. Pour into the prepared cake tin.
Bake for around 40–55 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. The cooking time depends on the size of your tin and the oven.
Spread over More than Whipped Cream and decorate as wished.
NOTES
No zucchini? Not to worry! Replace with more carrot. Other squashes similar to zucchini would also work. Same goes for no carrot — replace with more zucchini.
Try adding 2 tsp ground fennel to the cake batter.
You can bake this in a loaf pan and serve it with butter and a sprinkle of sugar.
Serve with whipped vanilla mascarpone. Cream cheese icing and orange zest works beautifully as well.
More than Whipped Cream
Makes: 1½ cups
This is my favorite sort of cream to serve with cake or pudding.
It is incredibly simple and more stable than whipped cream. I especially love to use crème fraîche as it cuts through the sweetness of puddings and cakes beautifully.
INGREDIENTS
200 g (7 oz) crème fraiche or mascarpone
150 ml (5 fl oz) cream
2 Tbsp icing sugar, optional
whichever flavourings you wish — I like vanilla, cinnamon or cardamom
METHOD
In a bowl, whisk together all the ingredients until thick and combined. You can do this by hand or with an electric beater.
Set aside in the fridge until ready to use. If you would like to make a quenelle (a nice spoonful), then keep in the fridge for at least 30 minutes and use a spoon that you first heat under hot water and dry.
Images and text from Alice in Cakeland by Alice Taylor, photography by Lottie Hedley and Melanie Jenkins (Flash Studios), published by Allen and Unwin NZ RRP $45.00.
