Walnut and Courgette cake

Another one of my favourite loaf cakes. This one's another quite healthy cake, as it uses wholemeal flour, sunflower oil and nuts. It came about because in France we always had a glut of courgettes and were finding ways to use them up. The recipe came from a neighbour who had the same problem!
I suppose this is a bit of nostalgia too, as we don't have room to grow courgettes in our small garden, so the ones I used were lurking in the veg drawer.

3 eggs
90g light muscovado sugar

125ml sunflower oil

250g wholewheat flour

1 tspn baking powder

1 tspn bicarb. of soda

1 tspn cinnamon

1 tspn allspice

150g grated courgettes

125g chopped walnuts

60g sunflower seeds

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

Grease and base line a 900g loaf tin.

Beat eggs and sugar together and gradually add oil.

Sift flour into another bowl and add the baking powder, bicarb, spices and nuts. Add the grated courgettes and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and spoon into loaf tin.

Bake for about 40 mins. Cool slightly in tin and then turn on to a wire rack.

A nice moist texture, with a good hit of spice. You can see specks of green in the cake, but I don't think people would realise that it's a courgette cake.

Peanut, chocolate and pecan cookies

My grandsons came for the weekend, and as the weather wasn't very kind, I wanted to find something to do with them. They enjoy cooking, so we made some cookies.
The original recipe had walnuts in it, but I needed to use up the last of my pecans. We found the recipe in an old Blue Peter book, which had belonged to the boys' Dad. They were then called biscuits, but cookies sounded more modern.
They all took a turn beating the mixture, adding ingredients and making the cookies into balls. I have to own up that I drizzled the chocolate over the ones in the photo - their efforts had the chocolate mainly over the worktop! They proudly took the finished cookies [well most of them!] home for their Mum, and wanted to take some in their lunch boxes.
We made 15 cookies.

Preheat oven 190C/gas5 and grease 2 baking trays.

Put 125g butter, 70g soft brown sugar and 70g caster sugar in a bowl and beat together till nice and creamy. Add 1 beaten egg and beat into the mixture. Fold in 200g of plain flour which has had 1 tspn bicarbonate of soda added, then add 2 tbspn of crunchy peanut butter, 100g chopped chocolate and 100g chopped nuts.
Mix it all together, then pull together with your hands to make a ball of stickyish dough. If it's too sticky just add a little more flour.
Make 15 balls and put them on the baking trays, leaving some space for the cookies to spread. Squash them down a bit.
Bake for 10-12 mins till golden and cool on a wire rack.
Melt 100g chocolate and either drizzle the chocolate over the cookies, using a fork to make lines, or put the chocolate in an icing bag and pipe lines over.

We only tried one each, so they could take the rest home. Lovely textures - crunch from the peanuts and pecans, then a good hit of chocolate. Very moreish.