Zucchini-Lemon Loaf Cake

This cake is really moist and trust me - you will not taste the zucchini. I promise, not even a little bit because I actaully do not even like zucchini. So this is perfect for using some left-over zucchini or to hide some zucchini if your kids are refusing to eat them any other way ;-) Anyway it's simply a delicious and easy to make lemon pound cake that stays moist for several days.

Ingredients for the Zucchini Lemon Loaf Cake
for 28x10 cm (11x4 inch) loaf pan

150 g (2/3 cup or 1 1/4 stick) Unsalted Butter (at room temperature)
200 g Sugar (litte less than 1 cup)
300 g (2 cups) All-purpose flour (I used 200 g Organic Flour Type 550/All-purpose Flour) and 100 g Organic Flour Type 405/Pastry Flour. More about the different types of flour can be found at germanfoodguide.com)
2 tsp Baking Powder (not Baking soda or Natron)
4 Eggs
75 g/3 EL (3 tbsp) Plain Yogurt (3,5% fat)
Juice of one Lemon
Lemon zest
275 g (about 2 cups) Shredded Zucchini (I used one medium sized zucchini)



1Wash zucchini, cut of ends and shred zucchini with food processor or grater (I used my vintage V-Slicer). Spread shredded zucchini on a clean kitchen towel and set aside. 2Preheat oven at 355°F (180°C). Line loaf pan with buttered parchment paper. 3Cream butter with sugar on medium to high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. 4Add eggs, one at a time and continue beating for 30 seconds after each egg. 5Roughly mix flour and baking powder with a whisk. Add flour mixture to batter and carefully fold in by hand or on lowest speed. 6Add lemon juice, lemon zest and yogurt and incorporate. 7Wring out the kitchen towel with the zucchini over your sink to drain as much liquid as possible. Add zucchini to batter and fold in. 8Put cake batter into buttered loaf pan and plance in preheated oven. Bake at 355°F (180°C) for about 50 minutes. 9Remove loaf pan from oven and let the cake cool down. Spread with one of the two frostings below if you like. I used the thick Lemon Frosting for the cake in the images...

Ingredients for the Lemon-Cream Cheese Icing
2 tbsp/EL Cream Cheese
6 tbsp/EL Icing Sugar
2 tbsp/EL Lemon Juice

Combine all ingredients in small bowl and mix with little whisk or spoon until smooth. Spread icing on cooled cake.

Ingredients for thick Lemon Frosting
6-8 tbsp/EL Icing Sugar
about 2 tbsp/EL Lemon Juice

Put icing sugar in small bowl and add lemon juice gradually using a tiny tea spoon until everything blends well. Mix with little whisk or spoon until smooth. If you added too much lemon juice add some more icing sugar until desired consistency is reached. Spread with knife over cooled cake.


The cake stays moist and delicious after cutting for up to 5 days. I always have best results in keeping pound cakes or loaves fresh by covering the cake roughly with some tin foil. I don't like to put my cake in air tight containers as I find it makes cakes kind of soggy...

Franconian Cherry Bread Pudding - Kirschenmännle

This recipe is a typical sweet hotdish from the area where I live, from Franconia in the northern part of Bavaria, Germany. It can be served as dessert or as main dish and it's the perfect sweet treat for a cold, rainy July sunday, like today. This Cherry Bread Pudding is called Kirschenmichel in most parts of Germany, but in Franconia we call it Kirschenmännla which translates to Little Cherry Man and makes probably no sense at all. ;-)



If you don't like cherries or you can't get any cherries you can also use plums (Pflaumen in German) or prunes (Zwetschgen in German). If you make this Bread Pudding it with plums or prunes we call it Pflaumenmännle here in Franconia - Little Plum Man - which is not to be confused up with the traditional little plum men sold at the Christmas Market in Nuremberg, the Zwetschgenmännle...but, well, this is totally irrelevant for this recipe. All you need to know that you can either make it with cherries or prunes. And that it is delicious both ways!

Ingredients for the Cherry Bread Pudding
for 12x8 inch / 30x22 cm baking dish
makes 6 servings

5 Old Rolls or Buns or 1 French bread (about 9 oz / about 250 g), roughly cut into cubes*
250 ml (1 cup) Whole milk
2 Eggs
50 g (about 3 - 4 tbsp) Sugar
2 tbsp Butter (room temperature)
350 g (12 oz/about 2 cups) Cherries, pitted (fresh or from the jar)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 pinch Ground Cinnamon

1Cut bread roughly into 1 inch / 2,5 cm cubes and fill into large bowl. 2Heat milk with vanilla and ground cinnamon in small saucepan and pour warm milk over the cubed bread. Let sit for 15 minutes. 3Preheat oven at 335°F (170°C). Butter baking dish. 4Separate eggs carefully. Beat egg whites until firm, adding gradually half of the sugar. 5In a separate bowl beat egg yolks with remaining sugar and butter until light and fluffly. 6Pit and drain cherries (if neccessary) and add to the soaked bread. Pour egg-yolk-mixture over bread and cherries and mix carefully. Add egg whites and fold in gently (but very roughly). 7Place everything into buttered baking dish and put into preheated oven. Bake at 335°F (170°C) for 35 to 45 minutes until top turns golden. 8Remove from oven, dust with icing sugar and serve immediately. If you like you can serve the Kirschenmännla with vanilla custard sauce or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

*The rolls or the bread does not have to be fresh! It is even better if the bread is already some days old and stale. So this recipe is perfect for using some left over bread. You can even use completely dried up bread but you might have to soak it a little longer and use some more milk than the 250 ml (1 cup) from the recipe. I prefer to use some German style Brötchen or some French Baguette. But you can basically use any kind of bread as long as it soaks up liquids, so no Pumpernickel or similar breads.