Blue Ballet Squash Honey Drizzle Cake

By krystallondon

This year I have well documented the plight of the Blue Ballet Squashes in the garden. A few weeks ago one was roasted for roast dinner and the second has been patiently waiting on the kitchen worktop for us to do something with it. After making the beetroot brownies a couple of weeks ago a fellow blogger pointed me in the direction of another Hugh F-W cake recipe that had appeared in the Guardian and contained butternut squash. I decided that if they cake would work with Butternut, it would work with Blue Ballet squash. Now I used to be a passionate hater of vegetables in cakes, but Hugh is slowly turning me around to them.

After grating 1kg of apples for the mincemeat the last thing I wanted to do was grate some squash. Plus a “squash + sharp knife = ouch” incident from a couple of years ago permanently scared on my thumb, I’m a bit fearful of this humble vegetable. This is when the trusty food processor comes into play and rather than grated squash I used finely diced squash. It produced a very thick cake mix and I was a bit apprehensive that I wouldn’t work, but it produced a perfect, beautifully moist cake where the flavours had all combined and the squash had melted into the cake. Absolutely delicious. It would also work well with a orange cream cheese frosting but Hubby has begged me to leave it as it is.

Ingredients

• 180 g self-raising flour
• 90 g light soft brown sugar
• 90 g golden caster sugar
• pinch of mixed spice
• pinch of grated nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• zest and juice of 1 orange
• 180 g butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 300 g squash, peeled, deseeded and grated/finely diced
• 75 g walnuts, chopped
• 50 g sultanas
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 5 tbsp honey

Preparation

Step 1

1) Preheat oven to 180oc. Mix together all dry ingredients and orange zest. Then beat in butter and eggs until you have a smooth batter. Gently fold in squash, walnuts and sultanas. Pour into a lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 50-55 min until skewer comes out clean.

2) About 5 min before cake is ready in a small pan heat honey, lemon juice and orange juice, simmer until it has thickened. When cake is ready take it out of the oven, skewer a few holes in the top of the cake and pour drizzle mix over. Allow to cool in the tin (due to the moisture content of the cake it takes a great deal longer than you expect to cool).