When you grow a lot of tomatoes, there is an inevitable glut of green tomatoes at the end of the season. We do all the normal tricks like picking them when they even show a smidge of colour and letting them ripen in large flat bowls in the kitchen. We also pull the whole plants out of the garden, roots and all, once the frosts start to come, and hang them upside down in the carport. Over the next few weeks, more fruit continues to ripen while still attached to the plant.
However there comes a stage when you have bowls of green tomatoes and that is when I stumbled across this cake recipe and absolutely love it. After all there is only so much green tomato pickle that you can eat or give away…… but you can freeze cakes.
Ingredients
2 ¼ cups sugar
1 cup (250 gm) butter, softened
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
1 cup sultanas
2 ½ cups diced green tomatoes
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
- In a mixing bowl, beat sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
- Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg
- Slowly beat into the egg mixture
- Stir in pecans, raisins and green tomatoes
- Pour into a greased and lined 23cm x 30cm pan and top with coconut if desired.
- Bake for one hour or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
