Vanilla and Courgette Cake

One of the best things about frugal living is that many of the ordinary things that we used to take for granted have become treats.  For example, we now have just one or two squares of dark bitter chocolate per week.  Yep, chocolate just once a week, on a Sunday with espresso.  And it is so good.  On Sunday morning we have become very middle aged, don't set the alarm and have tea in bed.  With a biscuit.  Wow, a square of chocolate and a biscuit on the same day.  Sunday really is like all our Christmases came at once!

On most Saturday mornings, I bake a cake.  Depending on the size, this may sometimes last until Tuesday; a slice with the cup of coffee in the morning and sometimes with the afternoon cup of tea, too.  

Sadly the cake for this post didn't make it very far through the week, and certainly didn't last long enough for me to remember to take a photograph.

Huge thanks must go to a visiting friend, Helen, who having witnessed my last sad and wizened vanilla pod go into the custard for bread and butter pudding - yes, it was a Sunday which is also the Pudding Day of the Week -  posted us a dozen of the fattest, juiciest vanilla pods I have ever seen.  Walking up from the boîtes aux lettres, parcel in hand, the aroma could be detected despite the glass test tubes and the multiple layers of packaging.  Amazing.

I wouldn't often use a whole pod in one dish, but there was no way I was going to miss out on one of my favourite flavours!

The normal recipe for this cake uses lemon, spiced up with ginger or mixed spice, but today it had to be vanilla that took top billing.

Vanilla and Courgette Cake

 

Ingredients

• 200g  grated courgette
• 150g vanilla sugar
• 1 egg
• 125ml (100g) vegetable oil
• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 whole vanilla pod

Method

Set the oven to gas mark 3.
Beat together  in a food processor or mixer the first four ingredients until completely blended and aerated.
Split the vanilla pod length ways and scrape all the seeds out into the bowl of the mixer and process again briefly.
Sift together the dry ingredients an fold into the wet.
Pour into a greased and lined loaf tin (I use a greased silicon loaf tin, popped inside a metal one to prevent the sides bulging during baking!) and bake in the oven for 50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.  My temperamental secondhand oven can take as long as an hour twenty to bake this cake!
Leave to cool in the tin before turning out.

Eat!

What is the Point of Green Zebra Tomatoes?

OK, so I've been growing them for three years now, three plants a year.  At the current rate, and with tomato seeds seemingly remaining viable for centuries, I should have enough seeds for at least another decade.  Oh joy.  Well, every cent I can save on tomato seeds means a cent or two I can spend on other things.  Aubergine seeds, perhaps, or maybe a real splurging out, and crossing the 1€ per litre barrier for everyday wine.  The seeds were free, a thank you gift for spending a pretty fortune through Graines-Baumaux, although after three years of growing the wretched things, I'm beginning to see why.  Beware the neighbour giving you free plants - lemon balm and mint have spread like Japanese Knotweed around my plot - and beware the seed company giving away free seeds.

 The problem?