On Sunday, my friend Vic hosted a wonderful 4th birthday party for her daughter, Mia. Vic, being Vic, had totally gone to town, in addition to catering for over 40 hugely excited children. There was fairy crown making, fairy wand making, bee/ladybird/dragonfly making; I was helping children to ice and decorate their own cupcakes and the long-suffering husband named himself the ‘bouncy castle fascist’ – monitoring how many children were on at one time and counting down their bouncing time!
How do you cater for that many children and their parents?? Vic made all children a sausage in a roll, served up veggies with houmous and crisps; finishing up with birthday cake! Parents were treated to a range of homemade cakes made by Vic, family and friends and the cake below was my offering – a gooseberry cake made with the gooseberries Abbie and I found at Groveland farm shop last Wednesday.
My gooseberry cake… – makes a large loaf tin shaped cake – easy for party slicing
280g/10oz self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
75g/3oz caster sugar
100g/4oz demerera – you’ll need an extra bit at the end for sprinkling to make the top crunchy (always do this on my loaf cakes)
100g/4oz soft soya marg
2 eggs
tiny splash of vanilla extract (or use vanilla sugar in place of caster)
1 large punnet gooseberries (sorry I didn’t weigh them) – top and tail
- Preheat oven to 180C. Line your loaf tin with parchment and grease the sides
- Stew the gooseberries by bringing to boil and then simmer for 5 mins until soft and popping out of their skins
- Beat the dry ingredients to combine
- Add marg, eggs, vanilla – beat lightly until it looks like cake mixture
- Add all but 1 cup of the stewed gooseberries (if you want some for a pudding) – fold in
- Pour in to loaf tin and sprinkle demerera sugar on top
- Bake for 45 mins and check that it is cooked by inserting a skewer into the middle – it should come out clean – if not bake for 5 mins and try again!
- Cool in tin for a little while and then remove to a cooling rack (or take it to the party in the tin as I did and turn it out there!
- Slice and enjoy!
Gooseberry cake, stewed gooseberries and Nigel Slater's amzing mascarpone cream
Abbie was dying to try gooseberries; I think she has had them before, but couldn’t remember – so that was an interesting experiment while we made the cake. Luckily she LOVED them! So I snaffled a few leftover pieces of cake from the party and served it up for our pudding.
I served it up warm with some stewed gooseberries and made Nigel Slater’s Mascarpone cream to go alongside – trust me when I say this is AMAZING! A no-cook custard which can be whipped up in a few mins.
Beat 2 egg yolks with 2 tblspns caster sugar; add few drops vanilla and 250g mascarpone, beat until smooth and custard-like! If it weren’t for the calories, I’d make it everyday!
Unfortunately I think we will have to rely on Grovelands for our gooseberries – have counted and we have 7 berries on our bush (still in trauma from last year’s frost obviously). I may be back this week!!
kidandkitchen 