The Best Courgette and Lime Cake!

Forget chocolate, forget peanut butter, close your eyes, imagine it's the summer and bake one of these fresh tasting, colourful courgette and lime cakes. 

Although maybe open your eyes to bake it....you don't want to burn yourself.

With little bursts of pomegranate and the zingy taste of lime, my taste buds were a-tingling with every slice I ate and I can hand on heart say, this was my favourite cake I ever did bake! (William and my lovely flatmate agreed too).

Cream cheese frosting is my favourite thing on the planet, and adding in the extra element of zesty lime lifts it to that extra level of scrum. The courgette element of the sponge makes it incredibly light and moist and could I get away with saying it's healthy....? 

Two of your five a day? ..... Courgette and lime....?

Let's go with yes and agree to do 10 extra star jumps before eating it. 

What you'll need//

250g caster sugar

200ml sunflower oil

4 eggs

couple drops vanilla extract

250g courgette (coarsely grated)

zest of 1 lime

juice of half a lime

250g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

half tsp of ground ginger

x1 tea towel

50g unsalted butter

100g cream cheese

2 tsp lime juice

200g icing sugar

couple drops vanilla extract

handful of pomegranate pips

handful of pistachios

What to do//

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C (fan) and line an 8 inch cake tin with greaseproof paper. 

Coarsely grate your courgette into a tea towel and squeeze as much water out of it as you possibly can. 

In a large bowl, whisk together your eggs, sugar, oil, vanilla, lime zest, lime juice and grated courgette.

Into the wet mixture, sift the flour, baking powder and ground ginger and mix until the flour is gone. Don't over mix.

Pour mixture into the lined tin and bake for 45 mins or until a knife comes out clean.

Leave to cool on wire rack.

For the frosting//

With an electric hand mixer, mix the butter for a couple of minutes, add the cream cheese and whisk for a further 2 minutes. 

Add the icing sugar 100g at a time, lime juice and vanilla and mix until you're happy with the consistency. If it's too thick add more lime juice, if too thin add more icing sugar.

Frost the cake when it's completely cooled and sprinkle on some chopped pistachios and pomegranate pips and grate over a little more lime zest.

Enjoy the refreshing taste!

Let me know how yours turn out in the comments below. I can't wait to bake another one!

Betty x

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