Elderflower, Poppyseed & Lime Cake

Hello lovelies, this week has been mainly about elderflowers since we finally have them in bloom in the North! 

Best to be picked on a bright sunny morning. There are Elderflower trees everywhere which makes picking them very easy, I picked a bag full on the way back from school. I also made some cordial from a River Cottage recipe without the citric acid and with 800g sugar, 1 lemon and about 3 pints of water.  (So not really their recipe at all! )

You will need to pick the flowers one day proir to baking as they need a night in the fridge. I picked 20 heads which gave me 300g of flowers, so for this recipe you probably need 12 ish. 

Anyhow the cake came out very well, not too sweet with a delicious sweet, tangy, crystalised lime topping and wafting the scent of elderflowers everywhere! 

For the cake:

200g sugar                                                                             16p
170g butter                                                                            68p
zest of 1 lime                                                                          33p
2 free range eggs                                                                    34p
150 ml milk                                                                            15p
200g plain flour                                                                       15p
2 tsp baking powder                                                                10p
100g poppy seeds                                                                   85p
150g elderflowers                                                                    FREE

For the topping:

juice of 1 lime ~ from the lime you've already zested
40g sugar                                                                              3p
a handful of elderflowers                                                          FREE
1 tsp of icing sugar                                                                 3p

Total:                                                                                   £2.82

Leave the heads of flowers in the fridge overnight and then the flowers can be gently taken off ~ trouble free.

Gather your ingredients and zest the lime.  Turn on the oven gas 4 / 180c.  Grease and flour an 8" loose base cake tin.

Cream the butter and the sugar, then mix in the lime, flour and baking powder.

Beat the eggs and milk together and add to the mix. 

Then gently add in the flowers and poppy seeds.

Spoon the mix into the tin and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.

For the topping: Put the sugar and lime in a pan and bring to a boil. Stir for 5 minutes or so until it becomes syrupy. Turn off the heat and add the flowers, then spoon evenly over the cake.

Sprinkle with icing sugar and leave to cool.

Or if you just can't wait ~ eat warm with a nice cup of whatever you fancy ~ tea ~ coffee ~ or ~ gin.

Spinach, feta, thyme & potato muffins

Things are hotting up here at Fern & Olive. 

By that I mean a number of things:  ~ Our fridge broke and keeping our food cold was becoming a pain, running up the road to the neighbours and swopping round ice blocks. But I finally managed to secure the loan of a fridge in exchange for some chocolate & raspberry brownies, things are cool again.

  

Our own fridge in case you are interested, is going to be fixed by the marvellous  Alan Greenhalgh  who can fix anything! But the Beko parts take blooming ages to arrive. In the mean time I am trying to win some extra fridges on Freecycle, to put in the garage because of the imminent summer catering jobs that I have on. Exciting!! 

But then my camera broke too!!!

Arrggg......... everything is great but everything is falling apart at the same time! 

So after a fair bit of sweary shouting and possibly waking the baby next door I just photographed this weeks blog on my phone and with Vinces (aged 7) camera and took the big camera to the camera shop.  The camera professional took one look at it, and I do mean just a look, and the camera magically started working again!

Anyway to the food ~ this weeks recipe is inspired by  'Spinach & Feta'  one of my all time favourite food couples.

This recipe makes 6/7

You will need:

125g plain flour                                                                                               30p

1 tsp baking powder                                                                                         10p

1/2 tsp bicarbinate of soda                                                                                  2p

salt & pepper                                                                                                     3p

1 egg                                                                                                              34p

2 tbsp olive oil                                                                                                 20p

125g yoghurt                                                                                                   55p

50g feta cheese                                                                                                90p

50g wilted spinach   (100g bag makes 50g of wilted and squeezed dry spinach)      60p
100g potatoes ~ cooked and chopped                                                                 14p

some sprigs of thyme                                                               free from the garden!

TOTAL                                                                                                         £3.18

Muffin cases or grease proof paper and a muffin tin.

Put the oven on, Gas 6 ~ 200c

In a bowl mix the dry ingredients. Whisk together the egg, oil and yoghurt then pour and fold into the flour mixture.

Wilt the spinach (see my Little Pies recipe for this if you need to) and chop.

Chop the cheese and potatoes into small chunks, and finely chop the thyme.

The flowers I kept aside for decoration but then forgot to use them!

 Fold in to the mix.

I had no muffin cases so I made my own from grease proof paper  16 x 16cm ish.

Shape the paper into the tins before carefully spooning in the mixture.

Bake for 18 ~ 20 minutes until golden brown.

And there you have it.

Delicious!  fresh from the oven with butter OR  I made a sweet chilli sauce to have mine for which I used my  Beau friends scrummy chilli jam. I just added a spoon of olive oil and a spoon of red wine vinegar to 2 spoons of chilli jam and stirred.  Extra delicious!