Hazelnut, Lemon and Elderflower Cake

Although I didn't pay much attention to the recent Royal Wedding, I must have been subconsciously influenced by the talk of a lemon and elderflower wedding cake, as I suddenly felt that that was the cake I really I wanted to eat.

Having decided which recipe to use, I realised that I didn't have any ground almonds, so used hazelnuts instead. I love using ground hazelnuts in cakes, as they actually add flavour, as well as keeping the cake moist - so often the flavour of almonds is lost, unless you are using a lot, or add almond extract too.

I chose to adapt this BBC Good Food recipe for a Lighter Lemon Drizzle Cake, as it is a reduced fat recipe, and uses oil instead of butter. I've always found it reliable, producing a light, moist cake with a good crumb texture. As I've mentioned, I used ground hazelnuts instead of almonds, and also used sunflower oil instead of rapeseed, as that's what I always have available. Instead of a lemon drizzle, I reduced 150mls of elderflower cordial by half, and drizzled that over the cooked cake, while still hot, then sprinkled the cake lightly with caster sugar.

This was a subtly flavoured cake - none of the three flavours dominated, although I would have liked to taste more of the elderflower; I think I was just unlucky that the brand of elderflower cordial that I bought was very delicate. Despite that, it was a very good cake for a warm spring weekend.

Lemon and Elderflower Drizzle Cake

Although this household doesn't celebrate Mother's Day, which is a commercialised parody of the true meaning of Mothering Sunday, it's difficult to avoid noticing that the day is upon us again, earlier than usual this year, as it's tied into the date of Easter.

Adverts for ideas on how to treat your mother with a thoughtful gift abound in the weeks leading up to the day itself, although I'm not sure how many mothers would be thrilled with a joint of beef, unless a special meal was also cooked for them by the gift-giver!

So, my concession to the date was to chose a cake for the weekend that I particularly wanted to try, rather than thinking about what anyone else might like. I chose to make a lemon cake drizzled after baking with a lemon and elderflower syrup. I took this recipe as a starting point, but made a few changes. I substituted 50g of the flour with 50g ground almonds, used the zest of two lemons, and baked in a tin which was slightly smaller than 20cm, to make a nice deep cake. The cake took a little longer to bake because of this.

I don't like drizzle cakes which are too wet, but the amount of syrup added to this cake was just right. The flavour of  elderflower cordial and lemon together was pleasant but I think they cancelled each other out a bit - neither flavour came through really strongly, even though I had increased the amount of lemon zest in the cake. The texture of the cake was very good - moist from the syrup and almonds but still light - and the crunchy topping of granulated sugar was a nice finishing touch. This was a simple, plain cake which would also make a good dessert served with cream  or yogurt.

Red Gooseberry Crumble

Our little gooseberry bush which produces red berries has never fared as well as the green gooseberry bush. It was damaged by a falling branch a few years ago, and also grows in a shadier part of the garden, overshadowed by what has become a hazelnut grove in my neighbour's garden. This year I gathered just over 400g of gooseberries from the red bush, compared with 2.6kg of green gooseberries.

net cage to protect ripening green gooseberries

I learned early on in my gooseberry growing experience that the only way to be sure of harvesting fruit is to build a net cage around the bushes as soon as the fruit gets to a reasonable size; the first year I waited until I thought the majority of berries were perfectly ripe and decided to pick the next day. Unfortunately the local blackbirds (I assume, as they are notorious fruit eaters) also recognised the ripeness of the fruit and stripped the bush in the early morning, before I was even out of bed. I didn't lose a lot that year, as both bushes were small, but since then I protect them with netting before the end of June, and expect to harvest any time after the middle of July.

netting removed to show framework of  a cage

I decided to use the red gooseberries first, as there were just enough to make a fruit crumble. The green gooseberries were frozen in handy sized portions, to be used at a future date. Gooseberries are a fruit which keeps in the freezer really well, and despite preferring to eat seasonally, it's nice to be able to have a gooseberry pie or crumble in the middle of winter!

I made my crumble from 100g each of butter, caster sugar, plain flour and rolled oats, and also added 50g of chopped toasted hazelnuts, as I liked the combination of gooseberries and hazelnuts together in this dessert. I mixed the gooseberries with 70g sugar, 2 tablespoons of elderflower cordial and two teaspoons of ground rice to thicken the juices produced.

A recipe for gooseberry crumble isn't something I'd usually bother to write about, but the red berries produced such a glorious colour that I couldn't resist taking a photograph. I think the berries were a little riper than usual this year - they were certainly darker in colour than photos from previous years, and had more natural sweetness while still retaining the characteristic tartness of gooseberries.

Gooseberry and Hazelnut Slices

I've been taking part in the Formula 1 Foods challenge over at Caroline Makes. The idea is to make a dish inspired by the country in which each round of the F1 Grand Prix races take place. This weekend, the race takes place here in Great Britain, so it was relatively easy to find an ingredient which, to me, seemed  to represent the best of seasonal British food.

I chose to bake with gooseberries, rather than go for a typically British recipe, such as Battenburg Cake, or Maids of Honour, for two reasons. The first was that it was impossible to make a choice between all the 'British' recipes I have; the second was that gooseberries seem the most British of all the summer fruits available. They don't feature much in the cookery of any other country, as far as I can find out, even though they can be grown in most of Northern Europe. At the moment they seem out of favour with even British cooks, perhaps because they are difficult to harvest, which makes them expensive to grow commercially, as well as fiddly to prepare once you've got them. I was surprised recently to hear Raymond Blanc say that he had never cooked with them before making a gooseberry cheesecake for the TV series 'Kew on a Plate'.

Having decided on gooseberries, I looked around for a new recipe to try. Because they aren't a commonly used fruit, there aren't many recipe variations around - pies, crumbles and streusel topped cakes seem the most popular use, but all the recipes are very similar. I was very pleased to find this recipe for Gooseberry and Hazelnut Slices on the BBC Good Food website, as pairing gooseberries and hazelnuts is new to me, and it got over a major problem with cake baking with fresh fruit in hot weather, namely that nothing keeps for more than a couple of days, without refrigeration, before going mouldy. This recipe cooks the gooseberries with a lot of sugar, to make a purée with an almost jam-like texture. I hoped this would hold the mould at bay for long enough for us to finish the cake, as I really dislike the texture of cakes that have been refrigerated.

There were three stages to the recipe, which made it quite a trial on one of the hottest days of the year (so far)! I decided to make my own shortcrust pastry, which increased the work load, then the fruit had to be cooked and a sponge cake topping made to go on top of the pastry and fruit.

I followed the recipe exactly, but rather than ice the cake to finish it off, I sprinkled 25g of chopped toasted hazelnuts over the cake batter before baking, then brushed the cooked cake with 3 tablespoons of elderflower syrup to glaze it, while it was still hot.

This recipe was not without it's problems. The first was that the cake batter took far longer to cook than stated. After 25 minutes it was dark brown on top but still very liquid underneath, so I covered it, reduced the temperature by 20C and cooked it for longer, testing every 7 minutes or so. It took another 20 minutes before I was satisfied that the cake was cooked through - that's a big discrepancy!

The second problem was evident when cutting the cake - the layer of gooseberry purée hadn't been thickened enough, so that it oozed out from under the cake layer, which in turn made the cake slide about on the base. This made the squares of cake difficult to serve and they had to be eaten with a fork rather than just fingers. I guess the amount of juice in gooseberries varies with factors such as variety and ripeness, so if I make this again, I will thicken the fruit by eye, rather than just using the amount of cornflour specified in the recipe.


It's certainly a recipe worth making again. The pairing of gooseberries and hazelnuts was delicious, and the gooseberries were still tangy and fresh tasting. The recipe is reminiscent of a Bakewell Tart, but using fresh fruit, rather than jam, elevates things to the next level.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Cheesecake

While checking around the garden recently, I noticed how quickly the gooseberries were growing. That reminded me that there were still some of last year's gooseberries in the freezer, which ought to be used before this year's excess fruit went in. So when I needed a dessert to take to lunch with friends, something that could be made with frozen gooseberries seemed the best idea.

The biggest problem with taking desserts to other people is carrying them with no damage. It's also a good idea to take something ready to serve, so you're not doing last minute cooking in someone else's kitchen, or taking up oven space at an inconvenient time. A cold dessert, which was not likely to spill while travelling, seemed ideal and I eventually decided on cheesecake. After looking at several very different recipes, I chose a Mary Berry recipe (from her book 'Ultimate Cake Book') for a set gooseberry and elderflower cheesecake using gelatine. A gelatine based cheesecake could be transported still in the springform tin in which it was made, and the sides removed when ready to serve.

I never like to make an untried recipe for other people, so I had a trial run with the cheesecake the weekend before it was needed.

I adapted the recipe slightly so that I could use leaf gelatine, which I find much easier to use than powdered. I also made a few other changes, such as leaving the sugar out of the biscuit base, using the whole 250g tub of cream cheese, rather than having 25g left over, and leaving off the whipped cream decoration, as extra cream didn't seem necessary for the trial run. All I needed to do, to use leaf gelatine, was to soften nine leaves in cold water, then add them to the sieved gooseberries while the purée was still warm.

As with the rhubarb meringue pie I made recently, the addition of cream to the fruit seemed to mute the flavour. It was good, but decidedly 'delicate', and not as sharp as when using gooseberries in a pie or crumble. The crumb base was thin but this was good, as thick bases can be too hard to cut and eat easily. The set cheesecake mixture had bonded with the base well, so there wasn't any danger of things falling apart. The texture was very light and aerated - very mousse-like - so it didn't really seem like eating a cheesecake at all.

Because I was a little worried about the lack of flavour, I decided to make a tangy gooseberry sauce to eat with the cheesecake when I made it the second time, for those who liked the sharpness of gooseberries. I made this by simmering 550g of gooseberries with 80g of sugar until softened. I strained the juices back into the pan and reduced them by about half, until syrupy, while I sieved the cooked gooseberries to remove the pips. The concentrated juices were stirred back into the purée - more sugar could be added at this stage, to taste, but I decided to leave the sauce quite sharp.

By the time I made the second cheesecake, the elderflowers were almost out, so I decorated the cheesecake with small sprigs of flower buds and gooseberry leaves, rather than whipped cream, and served it with creme fraiche. Unfortunately, as I had to leave it in the springform tin for transportation, I couldn't get a good photo of the second cheesecake.

As the mousse-like texture of this cheesecake relies on beaten egg whites, I'm entering this into Belleau Kitchen's Simply Eggcellent bloggers link-up for June, which is for recipes where free-range eggs feature heavily. Dom hasn't set a theme for this month - anything goes - but a light cheesecake with seasonal fruit is perfect for this time of year.

Apple and Pistachio Cake, with Elderflower Drizzle

As a break from cheap chocolate cakes for the We Should Cocoa challenge, I decided to tackle this month's AlphaBakes challenge. We're on the second run through the alphabet now, and this month's randomly chosen letter is E. I'd already decided that I would bake with Elderflower flavour, so imagine my delight at finding the first elderflowers out this morning, just in time to add to the photographs of the cake. I'd looked in my usual patch yesterday and they were still in bud, but this morning I passed an elder tree in a sunnier position, and the first bunches were open!

While I was looking for inspiration for flavours to pair with elderflower, I came across apple and elderflower yogurt in the supermarket, and a recipe for a pistachio, yogurt and elderflower cake from Jamie Oliver. Although the cake looked delicious, I didn't want anything quite so elaborate, but I liked the idea of using apples and pistachio nuts with the elderflower flavour.

I decided that I didn't want the contrasting textures of chopped nuts and chunks of apples, just their flavours, so I grated the apples and ground the nuts, so that the cake would have an uniform texture. I based the cake on this recipe for an apple cake using grated apple, substituting 50g of the flour with ground pistachio nuts and using golden caster sugar instead of brown. I also used about a tablespoon of elderflower cordial instead of milk to get a soft batter. I kept the peel on the apples - two small red eating apples - in the hope that the flecks of pink would show in the finished cake, but any visible peel seemed to have turned green on cooking! When the cake was cooked, I pricked the top all over with a cocktail stick and drizzled on 4 tablespoons (60mls) of elderflower cordial before leaving it to cool.

Although all the flavours were very subtle, the cake was delicious, and much lighter than I'd expected after the addition of grated apple. It might have been better to follow the example in JO's recipe, and use more cordial, reduced down to a syrup, but after a week of costing out cake recipes I was very conscious of how expensive elderflower cordial is!

AlphaBakes (rules here) is a challenge based on a randomly chosen letter of the alphabet. The dish made must feature something beginning with that letter as one of the main ingredients or part of the name. It is hosted jointly by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes. Ros is this month's host with the letter E, and will feature a round-up of entries at the end of the month.

Gooseberry, Almond and Elderflower Cake - A Tea Time Treat

This month's Tea Time Treat Challenge is baking with summer fruit. There are several varieties of soft fruit traditionally associated with a British Summer - raspberries, strawberries, cherries and so on - but thanks to improved growing methods and imports, many of these are now available all year round.

So for me. nothing says summer has arrived  more than picking my own gooseberries. Not only do they have a very short season, they are so out of favour with the British public that you hardly ever see them in the supermarkets, either in-season British, or imported. I've been growing them for three years now, and although the bush bearing a red variety of gooseberry has suffered damage since it was first planted, and isn't producing much yet, we get enough off the green variety for several crumbles or pies, plus a batch or two into the freezer in a good year.

Fortunately, this year our gooseberries are just about ready at the same time as the elderflowers, which are late blooming this year. I picked just enough fruit for this cake, and left the rest to mature a little longer. I'm not sure why elderflowers and gooseberries are traditionally paired together - this is the first time for many years that I've seen both ready at the same time. Perhaps things were different back in the days when traditions were being formed! Incidently - I went out to pick the elderflowers on the longest day of the year, after a torrential downpour of rain which was more reminiscent of a tropical storm than a British summer shower. Summer is not very summery this year!

So, for the Tea Time Treat challenge, I needed a cake, rather than a dessert. This is one of my favourite cake recipes for using fresh fruit, but for something releasing a lot of juice, as gooseberries do, the fruit must be cooked first. I used 500g fruit with a tablespoon of water and sugar to taste, and 3 large heads of elderflowers which were only just fully open. I cooked them together until the gooseberries had burst and release their juices, then I removed the flowers. I drained the fruit, reserving the juices, which I boiled down to a few tablespoons of syrup, adding a little more sugar to taste - this will be used to glaze the finished cake.

For the cake I used:

150g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
250g SR flour
50g ground almonds, plus an extra tablespoonful
A few drops almond extract
The cooked fruit, and prepared glaze
A handful of flaked almonds, for topping
A few sprigs of elderflowers for decoration

Pre-heat oven to 180C and grease and line the base of a 20cm(8") springform tin.
Melt the butter in a large bowl in the microwave, then stir in the sugar and beaten egg, followed by the flour, 50g ground almonds and almond extract. Mix until you have a soft dough - the consistency is like a soft cookie dough.
Use just over half the dough to cover the base of the cake tin, spreading it with fingers, and raising a lip around the sides about 1cm(1/2") high.
Sprinkle the extra tablespoon of ground almonds over the base.
Spread the fruit over the base, then cover with the rest of the dough, breaking off small pieces and scattering it over the fruit, and spreading with your fingers. (You need good coverage of dough around the edges, but it doesn't matter if there are small gaps with fruit peeking through in the middle of the cake). Sprinkle over the flaked almonds and press down lightly.
Bake for 50-60 minutes, until golden and firm. Cover with foil if the cake is browning too quickly.
When out of the oven, brush the top with the glaze, which is easier to spread if warmed (my glaze actually set like a jam while the cake was cooking!). Allow to cool.
Decorate with elderflowers just before serving (or just for the photograph in this case!).

This is a really delicious cake - Hubs reckoned that it's one of the best he's tasted for a long while. He's not usually very vocal about my cooking unless he really dislikes something, or finds something better than usual, so it must have been good!  It's a cake that is at home on the tea-table, but which could be served warm with cream, custard or ice cream as a dessert too.

The elderflowers made a huge difference to the flavour of the gooseberries and the glaze on top gave an extra fruity flavour boost. The texture of the cake is moist and dense - somewhere between a cake and a shortcake in texture, and the almonds are detectable but not overwhelming, even after using the almond extract. The centre fruit layer is not as deep as a pie filling but concentrates the flavour of the fruit more than just folding the fruit into the cake batter.

Tea Time Treats is a monthly baking challenge to provide goodies for the tea table, hosted alternately by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked. Kate chose this month's theme of summer fruits and will be posting a round-up of entries at the end of the month.

Update - June 28th

I've also entered this cake into the Elderflower Challenge at Lancashire Food, although I don't understand the technical bit about copying the badge code so that it links to the challenge! You'll just have to follow the link above if you want to see what's been entered into the challenge. Thanks to Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog, for bringing this challenge to my attention!

Pear and Elderflower Upside-down Cake

The theme for this month's Tea Time Treats challenge is floral - either in appearance or flavour. After my disastrous attempt to use rosewater in a Turkish Delight flavoured jam tart, I had a quick rethink and decided to try making something flavoured with elderflowers. In any other year, elderflowers would probably be blooming by now, and could be picked and used, but they are still a few weeks off flowering in this cold and wet part of the world, so elderflower cordial would have to do instead.

I wanted to use the cordial to flavour a sponge cake and decided to make an upside down cake with pears, so that the flavour of the elderflower wouldn't be overwhelmed by the other ingredients. I'm not sure I succeeded totally on that point, but I did manage to arrange the pears to make the cake look almost floral!

I adapted this recipe for a Lighter Lemon Drizzle Cake again, and made it larger by around 30%, so that I could use a larger cake tin.

I used a 9" (22cm) springform tin, lined with baking parchment to come about 1/2" (2cm) up the sides of the tin. (Unfortunately this still wasn't quite high enough to prevent the syrup in the base from leaking out, so I really must get hold of some cake tin liners for these sort of cakes!)

I sprinkled the base of the cake tin with 50g light muscovado sugar, and dotted around about 50g butter. I then drizzled over 2 tablespoons of elderflower cordial before arranging tinned pears and halved glacé cherries into a vaguely floral pattern. I used  7 pear halves, cutting one into a circle for the centre of the arrangement, but I wished I had squeezed in another when I saw the finished cake.

For the cake batter, I used:

240g SR flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g polenta
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
190g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
270mls natural yogurt
100mls sunflower oil
3 tablespoons elderflower cordial
few drops yellow colouring

This is a cake which is simple to make - put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Beat together the yogurt and eggs and stir that and the oil into the dry mix until fully incorporated. Stir in the cordial and colouring at the end, before spooning the batter over the fruit carefully, so as not to disturb the fruit. Bake at 180C for about 60 minutes, covering the cake if it seems to be browning too quickly. Test with a probe to see that it comes out clean, then leave the cake in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out, fruit uppermost.

The cake was well flavoured, and moist, although the elderflower wasn't a very strong influence - I think I should either have used a little more cordial, or left out the lemon zest in the batter.

If I hadn't have been using the floral theme, I would have cut the pears into thinner slices and packed them in more closely - as it was some servings didn't get their fair share of pears!

I served the cake as a dessert with creme fraiche, but  it would be equally at home on the tea table.

Tea Time Treats is a monthly baking challenge to provide goodies for the tea table, hosted alternately by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked. Karen chose this month's floral theme and will be posting a round-up of enries at the end of the month.

Lemon, Almond and Elderflower Cake

I've decided that I'm jinxed when I try any cake which includes a "whisk until pale and thick" step. I thought this one might be different because the eggs and sugar were whisked over simmering water, but once again the cake sank (or didn't rise properly) in the centre. The flavour was very good, and the texture was light and moist, and above all, even, throughout the whole cake, so it wasn't a case of underbaking and a soggy centre.

I chose this recipe from Good to Know, but replaced the Amaretto liqueur with elderflower cordial. Instead of putting flaked almonds on top before baking, I left the cake plain, then brushed with another 2 tablespoons of elderflower cordial, and sprinkled lightly with demerara sugar as soon as it was removed from the oven.

The only problem with the recipe was that the cake was still very wobbly in the centre at the end of the cooking time. It needed another 10 minutes baking after the suggested 25 minutes, but was already quite dark, so needed covering with a piece of foil.

The elderflower flavour wasn't really noticeable in the finished cake, but I didn't want to add alcohol, or increase the almond flavour, in this cake.

Double Helpings of Desserts

They are not seasonal, it's true, but a lunch party seemed an excellent reason to use some of my frozen gooseberries. These were a gift from my mother - we planted two gooseberry bushes this year but the yield wasn't enough for excess to be frozen.

As the desserts needed to be dairy-free, and fairly light, as the rest of meal was quite substantial, I chose this recipe for Gooseberry and Elderflower Jelly from Delia Smith. Instead of wine I used a sparkling grape juice drink, as I knew several of my guests didn't drink alcohol.

It's a fairly simple recipe to follow; the only problem was that the amount of liquid for soaking the gelatine didn't seem enough - the powdered gelatine absorbed it all and still looked grainy, so I added enough to keep the gelatine loose enough to be stirrable. Most recipes use hot water to soak powdered gelatine, so that might have been a better option.

The jelly took ages to set - long enough to have me worrying that it wasn't going to set at all, but it did eventually. The resulting dessert was vey tasty and light, although there was no evidence that a sparkling drink had been used, probably due to the long setting time.



The second dessert was more seasonal - Blackberry and Apple Mousse - and again, was dairy-free. The recipe was adapted from a recipe for a Summer Fruit Mousse in a 'free from' cookery book I have, and uses coconut cream and soya cream, and some gelatine, instead of dairy cream, plus a couple of beaten egg whites to lighten the mixture a little. This dessert didn't produce the same clean flavour that the gooseberry dessert did; the creaminess seemed to dilute the flavour too much.

For 6 servings you need 500g of cooked fruit, sweetened with 100g sugar (or to taste) . While this is hot, add 2 tablespoons of powdered gelatine soaked in 3 tablespoons very hot water, then sieve or purée, depending on whether there are pips to remove. When cool, and just showing signs of setting, stir in a 160ml tin of coconut cream and a 250ml carton of soya cream. Then beat 2 egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture. Spoon into individual glasses, or a large bowl. The recipe suggested decorating with frosted fresh fruit - dipped in lightly beaten egg white then caster sugar.