I never once encountered Elderflower in Japan so it was a delight to be reacquainted with these beautiful frothy heads of pollen and pretty little blooms. I recently made some elderflower syrup, with only Rapadura sugar to hand the resulting syrup is earthy brown in colour and not as delicate as it could be. My kids weren’t too impressed, so I began to think of alternative ways to use it.
This is a twist on my favourite lemon drizzle adding summer raspberries and using elderflower syrup on top. It’s what I call a ‘saucepan cake’. Instead of creaming the butter and sugar first (which requires you to be organised enough to take the butter out of the fridge in advance) the butter is melted with the sugar in a pan. I then use the same pan to mix the other ingredients (I even stick it on the electric scales to weigh the flour) meaning just the pan and baking tin to wash up at the end.
My children were much more impressed with this.
Ingredients
- 200g butter
- 180g sugar (I use Rapadura)
- 200g self-raising flour (or plain spelt with baking powder)
- Zest of one lemon
- 3 large eggs
- 1 punnet raspberries
- 3 – 4 tbs elderflower syrup
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C
- Melt the butter and sugar in a pan over a gentle heat
- Take off the heat to cool slightly
- Add the lemon zest and one tbs of elderflower syrup, crack in the eggs and beat well
- Add the flour and mix to make smooth batter
- Break the raspberries into smaller pieces
- Pour a third of the cake mixture into a prepared loaf tin
- Sprinkle over some raspberries pieces, repeat and finished with raspberries on top (they mostly sink but some might remain)
- Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean
- While still warm prick all over with a skewer or fork and spoon over the remaining elderflower syrup
- Leave to cool in the tin
Kando Journal & Kitchen 