Coming back from holiday we found the back garden had been taken over by 10m high marrows!

Well maybe that’s an exaggeration… but they were big enough to give us an excuse to find ways to use it all up. Obviously this weekend’s Rye Sourdough will will be marrow-based, but it was also clear: a cake must be made!

Thankfully BBC Good Food Magazine’s August issue had a feature on marrows, including a marrow cake, which was a very simple recipe which I modified only slightly:

• Dry
  • 300g wholemeal real-raising flour
  • 3 tsp mixed spice
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 250g light soft brown sugar
  • 200g pecans & walnuts, smashed with a rolling pin
• Wet
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 orange, zest & juice
  • 250ml rapeseed oil
  • 300g grated marrow
• Icing
  • Icing sugar
  • 2 tbsp water
  • Splash lemon juice
  • Squeeze of maple syrup
• Topping
  • Desiccated coconut 

Start by mixing the dry stuff together, then beating eggs and liquids… and getting yourself all mise en place.

Then you mix it all together.

The recipe was for a round cake… but I’ve been wanting to use some of the Baked and Delicious silicone bakeware we’ve been accumulating. 

So after spraying. in goes the mix.

Then into a low oven, 140c fan, for 1 hour 20 mins, until the skewer comes out dry.

Which looks great… except it’s risen more than expected and of course this is getting tuned out!

Well nothing I can do now… leave it to cool for a couple of hours before turning out.

Hehe not bad! After it’s cooled I strayed again from the recipe and decided to go with a water icing rather than cream cheese. I figure this will drizzle over the cake nicely. But I kept the maple syrup!

Oh… then I decided I really wanted to toast some desiccated coconut and throw that over the top. So dry frying pan until it just starts browning…

Then straight off the heat into a plastic bowl ready for decorating.

So… icing first. Spooned on to the top it ran down the sides in a really attractive way!

Then the coconut gets sprinkled over it (and excess icing and coconut wiped away).

Then… sod letting the icing dry (it’s water anyway…) so cut into it and NOM!

Turns out you couldn’t taste the coconut, or the marrow for that matter! But apart from that it was really good. OK it was a bit fally-aparty, like carrot cake but without the cream cheese icing to hold it together! But… erm… CAKE!