With lockdown and home schooling in full flow, we’re spending the afternoons gardening, foraging and cooking, making the most of the beautiful weather with bucketloads of gratitude that we live in place where we step out across fields in isolation. For anyone else with access to the countryside at this time, we hope you might enjoy this recipe. We adapted it from a recipe we found online, making it gluten free and using up a couple of different flours we have in the cupboard, plus adding some gorse syrup into the recipe and and using this in combination with oil as a replacement for butter, as well as drizzling some of our syrup on top once the cake was baked.
We hope you enjoy the recipe, Cyra was in charge of writing out the ingredients and process while the twins helped me make a big gooey mess. Interestingly, no-one was keen to lick the cake batter and it was met with “ooooh this is going to be GROSS Mummy!", but it’s turned out to be a true family favourite!
For anyone having to isolate indoors, you are in our thoughts and we very much hope it won’t be long before you too can be foraging outside. Gorse is used as a remedy for regaining hope. Sending hope and love from us all,
Tia, Cyra, Otto & Nell x
Nettle & Gorse Syrup Cake
Ingredients
40g nettle leaves
3 eggs
250g honey
100ml vegetable oil
100ml gorse syrup (for recipe, see below)
250g gluten self-raising free flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
Method
Heat oven to 180 C. Grease a cake tin approx 20cm diameter.
Steam the nettles for 5 minutes then set aside to cool. When a little cooler and easier to handle, chop into small pieces.
Put the honey, vegetable oil and gorse syrup into a pan and heat gently for 5 minutes so they combine together
In a medium sized bowl, crack the eggs and stir with a fork. Add the nettle and mix together.
In a large mixing bowl combine the flours, baking powder and spices. Add the egg and nettle along with the honey, oil and gorse syrup, and mix well.
Pour into cake tin and bake in oven for approx 40 minutes - insert skewer to check, when the cake is ready it should be golden on top and the skewer come out clean.
When cake is ready leave to cool a little before removing it from the tin.
We decorated our cake by pouring over a little gorse syrup to help the flowers stick, sifting some icing sugar on top then laying primroses and gorse flowers (both of which are edible - see foraging guidelines below) onto the cake.
To make gorse syrup
We used 1 litre water and 400g granulated sugar, combined them in a saucepan and simmered for 10 minutes then removed from heat and added 5 large handfuls of gorse flowers. We left it overnight then simmered for another 10 minutes in the morning before straining through muslin, bottling and popping in the fridge. This makes lots of syrup - enough for a good few cakes, drinks, salad dressings and anything else you care to make with it - and we’d love to know if you have any good ideas!
Foraging guidelines
Do remember to follow responsible foraging guidelines, ensuring you only take plants when there is a plentiful supply, just picking what you need, and never taking the roots. Seek permission before foraging on private land. Here at Botelet Farm there the hedgerows are teeming with primroses, however be aware that in some areas these primroses can be scarce and are therefore not suitable for picking. It’s a good idea to check foraging guidelines before setting out, see for example Wild Food UK’s Foraging Code.
