Wiltshire Whitsun Cake

Ingredients

5 elderflower blossoms
120 gr wholemeal flour
9 gr baking powder
2 eggs
160 gr butter
140 gr pale muscovado sugar

Instructions

Demerara sugar Flowers & leaves to garnish *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 20 cm spring-clip cake tin, line and grease again. Turn the cake mixture into it and mound it up in the middle. Bake at 180ºC (180 C) gas mark -20ºC or about 1.5 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.