Chocolate Courgette Blueberry Cake
With a bumper crop of courgettes and many remnant boxes of blueberries from our recent blueberry picking expedition, I decided I needed to make something worthy of our harvesting efforts to indulge ourselves and salivate over. Basically, this recipe is the result of trying to get rid of produce in my kitchen without sending it to the compost.
I grabbed inspiration from a recipe in Alison Holst’s “Meals without meat” recipe book – there is a well known chocolate courgette cake in there that works well. However, I wanted my recipe to be a bit more decadent and fancy so added the blueberries. I also thought I’d make it a bit more upmarket and trendy sounding by using ground linseeds and almonds; by this I actually mean I wanted to get rid of an excess supply of the stuff in my pantry so chucked them in too!
I have video footage of how I made most of my recipes including this chocolate courgette blueberry cake but time has not been on my side with looking after a 6 month old. My new plan is to blog post the recipe so it is stored somewhere and does not get lost to the ether of my brain then try to edit and upload the process videos as I get more time. If you would particularly like to see the process video for how to make this recipe, leave a comment to let me know and I’ll try to finish it first.
Tips and Tricks, you might like to take note of the following...
Make sure to sift the baking soda as you add it. Often I do not bother with sifting my dry ingredients, this is purely because I’m either lazy or in a hurry at the time. However, whenever you have baking soda in a recipe, make sure to sift it in; there is nothing worse than biting into nice looking delectable baked goods only to get a mouthful of dry baking soda -eek!
I like to make my own ground linseeds by grinding linseeds in a spice grinder that came with my food processor. We use ground linseeds in our homemade bread so is not so much of an extra process for us. I use brown linseeds but feel free to use golden linseeds if that is what you have on hand. Also, it is good to know that linseeds and flaxseeds are the same thing, different bulk bin places, supermarkets, retailers use the two different names interchangeably so it is handy to know they are talking about the same seed.
Pure vanilla essence, usually Madagascan, if my supermarket has it is the type of vanilla essence I usually use. However, it will not make a huge taste difference if you use imitation vanilla essence. Again, just use what you have or can get your hands on.
Fresh blueberries can be used in place of frozen ones. In fact, the blueberries I had on hand were picked fresh from our local blueberry farm which has an annual ‘pick your own’ season. However, we picked so many that we had to freeze half in order to keep them and ensure they did not go to waste. So I ended up using frozen blueberries.
The ground almonds I use in my baking is the type where the almond skin is not included in the mixture. I generally buy it pre-ground from our local bulk bin supplier and it looks like ground up blanched almonds. Of course if you have the time and tenacity, you can always grind up your own ground almonds or almond meal.
Chocolate Courgette Blueberry Cake
Serves 8
1 cup Flour
1.5 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 cup Cocoa
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Ground Linseeds
1/4 cup Ground Almonds
3/4 cup Almond Milk, unsweetened
3 Eggs
1 tbsp Vanilla Essence
2 cups Courgette, grated
3/4 cup Chocolate Chips
1 cup Blueberries, frozen
This is not vegan if it has 3 eggs so should not be listed under this category. A wasted search for a vegan cake
Sorry you wasted a search. I agree with eggs in the recipe it is not vegan. My vegan and vegetarian recipes are listed under one category. Given your feedback I will see how to re-categorize the existing (and future) recipes appropriately into separate categories so this does not happen again. Seems pretty obvious that this should have been this way from the start. Many thanks for your comment.
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