Pistachio, Courgette and Lemon cake

I was tactfully left a bbc good food cake book on my desk last week so I took the hint and bake (and adapted) a little something from: Lemon, courgette and pistachio cake.

I brought 2 bags of pistachios (175g each) but forgot that they had shells on them so a) it would take forever to shell them and b) the weight would reduce dramatically! I subbed the rest of the pistachios in the recipes with almonds, added an extra lemon in the cake and baked it in a loaf tin instead. Quote: “Jess, I don’t think you have ever baked a bad cake, all of your cakes are perfect”. – there you go!

Ingredients
100g shelled pistachios
75g ground almonds
250g golden caster sugar / soft brown sugar
200g butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
280g plain flour
1¼ tsp baking powder 1¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 large eggs 140g Greek-style, full-fat yogurt
zest and juice 3 lemons (and one extra for the icing)
140g coarsely grated courgette
175g icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon curd

Method
Put 150g of the pistachios, almonds and the sugar in a food processor and whizz until the nuts are very finely ground. Heat oven to 160C fan and grease and line a loaf tine.

Tip the nut sugar into a big mixing bowl with the butter, flour, baking powder and bicarb, eggs, yogurt and the zest and juice from 3 of the lemons. Beat with an electric whisk until smooth and combined.
Stir in the courgette until everything is well mixed, then scrape into the prepared tin. Bake for 35-40 mins until the cake is risen and golden, and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool.

When the cake has fully cooled, remove from the tin and peel off the baking parchment. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, and gradually stir in enough lemon juice to get a runny-ish consistency. If you run out of juice, carry on mixing with water. Drizzle thickly over the cake, and repeat with lemon curd, if you like. Roughly chop the remaining pistachios and scatter over the icing, along with the remaining lemon zest and tah-dah!!

Happy baking. Jessa x