Not such a Gooseberry Fool this time…

Following on from our Gooseberry raid on our next door neighbour’s garden,

and my slightly less than successful Gooseberry jam making, I appealed to the good people of the Twittersphere for other gooseberry recipes.

This one came from @ABInBalance, who is very lovely, and as well as giving me this recipe, also gave me lots of good advice for my TEDx talk-thankyou so much Angela!

The recipe is for a Gooseberry and Almond Cake.

• 125g butter
• 125g caster sugar plus 5tbspns extra
• 3 large beaten eggs
• 75g plain flour sifted
• 75g ground almonds
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 350g gooseberries topped and tailed
• 35g flaked almonds (I didn’t have any of these, so mine was ‘naked’ on top)
• Icing sugar for dusting
• Creme fraiche / whipped cream to serve

This is what you do:

• Pre-heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5
• Beat the butter and 125g of sugar until pale and fluffy
• Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition. If the mixture starts to curdle,add a tbspn of the flour
• Fold in the rest of the flour, plus the ground almonds and baking powder, using a large metal spoon and scrape into a buttered 20cm (*8 in) spring-form cake tin
• Toss the gooseberries with the 5tbspn caster sugar and spread them over the top of the cake
• Put in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.  Sprinkle on the almonds and bake for a further 10 mins
• The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean!
• Leave the cake to cool in the tin, then carefully remove ring and base.  Dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream / creme fraiche

We had this without the flaked almonds, icing sugar or creme fraiche and it was still absolutely scrummy.

Enjoy!