Written by Angela Jackson-Selle: Community Gardener,
It’s October: The air has a brisk tang, the leaves are turning, and those tomato plants are laden with beautiful green fruit that isn’t going to ripen. Some of them are starting to yellow, and will still turn red on the kitchen counter, but the really green ones—how disappointing. WAIT! Don’t compost or even (gasp) throw away those green tomatoes. They can still be delicious. Fried green tomatoes are yummy for sure, but there is another option–Green Tomato Cake.
Green Tomato Cake:
Ingredients:
2 ¼ c sugar
1 c vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 t vanilla
3 c flour
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
½ t nutmeg
1 c pecans or walnuts
1 c raisins
2 ½ c diced green tomatoes
Shredded coconut (optional)
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
3. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Blend into egg mixture. Stir in nuts, raisins, tomatoes.
4. Pour into greased 9 x 13 pan. Top with shredded coconut if desired.
5. Bake for one hour or until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean.
—
Gather those green tomatoes before the frost gets them.
Dice them up—I highly recommend delegating the picking, rinsing, and dicing to a 12-year-old, if you happen to have one about the house. Mine did a great job.
The oil, sugar, and eggs will look about as you expect when creamed together:
But when the dry ingredients are mixed in, it seems a bit dry:
DON’T WORRY—even though they are green, those tomatoes have quite a bit of moisture in them, and when you mix them in, the batter will look more like typical cake batter:
See, still bit thick—coffee cake, not birthday cake, consistency—perfectly spreadable into the pan:
I did top it with coconut, but since I didn’t have any shredded on hand, I used ground unsweetened. Shredded is also very nice, and if you don’t like coconut, this turns out nicely without any at all:
Pop it in the oven, but be sure to check on it—it should stay fairly moist, and if you use a larger shallower pan it won’t take as long to bake. It isn’t as nice if left to dry out.
Green tomato cake is more of a coffee cake in its nature, but that doesn’t stop my family from having it for dessert and serving it a la mode. 🙂
