Courgette and Lemon Marmalade Cake

I'm still using the abundance of courgettes growing in the garden - they've been added to sausage casseroles, pasta sauces, used as a side vegetable, and FB took a bag full for her work colleagues, but still they come! I'm going to try some sort of fritter next, in the savoury line, but I thought a cake would help reduce the stock building up in the fridge.

I liked the look of this recipe for a courgette cake because it used lemon to flavour the cake instead of chocolate or spices. I thought this would make the cake seem more summery. I was guided by the recipe, but made a few changes. I replaced the wholemeal flour with white, and the brown sugar with white too, as I wanted a lighter cake, both in colour and texture. I used just sultanas, rather than a mix of dried fruit.

I also separated the eggs and whisked the whites before folding them in as the last step of mixing the batter, in an effort to help the cake rise. This was only partially successful - the cake rose well during baking but sank a lot as it cooled. This left a cake which was moist and dense - too dense really, as there was a distinct layer of unrisen dough at the bottom of the cake.

The lemon marmalade wasn't really successful at getting a lot of lemon flavour into the cake either. I added a lemon glacé icing, decorated with shreds of lemon zest, to the top, which brightened the flavour, but overall this was not really a successful cake. I had hoped for something as light as the carrot cake I make from this recipe, but I think that courgettes hold more moisture than carrots, which would make such a light texture difficult to achieve. I might just try the carrot cake recipe with courgettes as a substitute, before giving up on the idea of a light cake being possible.

It's not often that Hubs makes many comments on what I bake, unless it is extremely good or overwhelmingly bad, but he asked me not to make this cake again!