Wiltshire whitsun cake

8 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
¾ pounds Sm. tart green gooseberries
5 Elderflower blossoms*
½ pounds Plain wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons Baking powder
2 larges Eggs
6 ounces Butter
6 ounces Pale muscovado sugar
Demerara sugar
Flowers & leaves to garnish

Directions

*Note: A handful of sweet geranium or lemon balm leaves may be substitued for elderflower blossoms if desired.

Top and tail the gooseberries into a mixing bowl. Add the finely chopped leaves or the florets of elderflower carefully stripped from the stalk, and stir to mix with the fruit. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl. Cut then rub in the butter. Stir in the muscovado sugar then the lightly beaten eggs. Finally, stir in the gooseberries and their flavourings.

Grease the base of an 8-inch spring-clip cake tin, line and grease again. Turn the cake mixture into it and mound it up in the middle.

Bake at 350 F (180 C) gas mark 4 for about 1½ hours. Unlike most cakes, this one does not come away from the sides of the tin when it is cooked.

Cool for a few minutes before unmoulding. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and decorate with fresh elder blossom or sweet geranium or melissa leaves, and serve the deliciously moist cake while it is still warm - as a pudding, with plenty of cream.

Source: Philippa Davenport in "Country Living" (British), June 1988.

Typed for you by Karen Mintzias

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