I’ve been getting ready for a Macmillan coffee morning this week, fitting in a bit of baking since it’s been a bit too wet and wild to merit spending time in the veg patch (I’m definitely a fair-weather gardener!) In a bid to use up as many courgettes as I can, I decided to bake all my cakes using veg (and fruit) from the garden, and it’s been quite fun finding and trying the different recipes.
One thing I have found is that the majority of vegetable cake recipes share a love of cinnamon, which I am very fond of, but I wanted to get a bit more variation in the different cakes. This is what I came up with:
- Lemon Courgette Drizzle Cake – I used Mary Berry’s recipe for lemon drizzle cake and added a large grated courgette to the mixture. I have to say, it tastes pretty good and is nice and moist. Please don’t tell Mary Berry that I deviated from her original recipe!
- Beetroot Brownies – there are hundreds of recipes for chocolate brownies with beetroot, and I think they are all much of a muchness. I actually used Cornish Sea Salt’s recipe for salted brownies, and added in the grated beetroot (I used a very large beetroot that appeared on my Leaf Beet Bulls Blood)
- Rainbow Carrot Cupcakes – My carrots weren’t much to look at when I harvested them, very knobbly and gnarly! But they were great for grating and I made three different carrot cupcake mixtures, one with purple carrots, one with white/yellow carrots and one with orange carrots. You can’t really tell the difference between the white and orange, but the purple ones are a lot darker so the contrast is nice.
- Jerusalem Artichoke Cake – I haven’t made this yet, but it’s on the agenda for the weekend. It’s one of the cinnamon/nutmeg typed cakes, but I couldn’t find many other options and Mark Diacono seems like a reliable recipe source.
- Parsnip and Maple Syrup Cake – again, I haven’t made this yet, but thought it would be fun to try if I have time. The recipe is from Catherine Berwick
- Apple & Blackberry Crumble Muffins – I love crumble so this is the perfect cake for me, and a good way to use the last of the seasons blackberries. It’s from the Delicious magazine recipe
Hopefully this might be food for thought for any other Rocket Gardeners out there who are getting involved with Macmillan’s coffee morning this week….good luck and well done to you all!