I like to bake.  It is the only form of cookery I enjoy and happen upon spontaneously. I’m not talking British Bake Off standards here, just a woman who likes to mix ingredients and watch the concoction rise in the tin or dish.

Cakes are a feature of our household and having young kids, these are typically traditional – the Madeira, chocolate fudge, Victoria sponge, scones, marble, toffee…  My kids devour them. They often help with the mixing, weighing out the ingredients and most definitely licking the bowls, smearing the chocolate over their cheeks and fighting over the tiniest morsel left on the bottom.

After my endeavours, aided in a nearly unhelpful fashion by two eager young chefs, I look forward to sampling the result. I taste a slice after it comes out of the oven, all steaming and it melts in the mouth.  Great, worth the effort. Days later, it’s gone and without another crumb landing on my tongue. It is a magic trick – the moment I bake a cake it vanishes inside the hungry mouths of children who must burn calories like a space rocket. I don’t begrudge them, after all being a mum is all about feeding those growing tummies, but really, can’t I at least savour a little more?  Even the ginger, which I thought would be detested, was snapped up.

So, in an effort to make my baking more healthy and adventurous, I baked a lemon and courgette (zucchini to those in other parts of the world) cake and offered it to them.

Yuk. It’s green (the batter is greenish, but the cake comes out looking like a ginger one).

It smells. Of cinnamon – delicious, says I.

It’s got bits. The courgette is crated, but it also turns wonderfully juicy to help mix with the flour and sugar.

The noses turned up and the faces scowled. “We don’t like it.”

Shame.  All that effort.  I scoffed the lot. Yummy.

So I now have my selfish mum cake. Guaranteed to be ignored by offspring and wholly mine.

I don’t bake it that often, but when I do, I listen to the groans – can’t you make a chocolate one?

Another time, I say – do you want to try a slice?

No?  Pity…. one day, maybe, they might surprise me.

As for the cake – it can be found here – I bake, not invent, so this is lifted off a website.