Elderflower and Gooseberry Butterfly Cakes
These competition winning Elderflower and Gooseberry Butterfly Cakes use two classic British ingredients for a tasty afternoon tea treat.
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Competition winning cupcakes!
Every month, a recipe competition is hosted on the blog WeGrowOurOwn. Craig, the author of the site, selects a handful of seasonal fruit and vegetables and invites his readers to submit recipes to the blog which use one or more of the selected fruit/veggies. He then selects finalists from those submitted (and extra points are given to those who have grow the fruit or veg themselves!) The competition is then opened up to votes.
This month, I decided to enter the competition. Craig had selected Broad Beans, Beetroot, Gooseberries, Carrots and Peas. The gooseberries instantly jumped out at me as my gooseberry bush in the garden is currently weighed down with big juicy fruits so I set to coming up with a recipe.
The concept for these is an innocent looking butterfly cake, perfect for garden parties, that has a surprise jam-like centre. Whilst there are a number of elements and processes (so please take this into account) it is a lot easier than it sounds and well worth all of the effort!
How to bake the perfect cupcake
I’ve spoken in length about how to bake the perfect cupcakes or fairy cakes over here. A light, moist cake is an essential foundation for these butterfly cakes. In short you need to:
- Start with your ingredients at room temperature
- Don’t over mix your batter once you’ve added the flour
- Use a scoop to fill your cupcake cases
- Always pre-heat your oven
- Invest in an oven thermometer
- Don’t open the oven door while they are still cooking
- Don’t leave them to cool in the pan
How to make Gooseberry and Elderflower Jam
While your cakes are baking you are going to want to make the sticky filling. It’s a quick and easy jam made with fresh gooseberries, lots of sugar to balance out their tartness and elderflower cordial for a floral flavour.
You get extra bonus points if you elderflower cordial is homemade!
These ingredients get heated together in a sauce pan until the fruit has burst and the sugar has melted. Lemon juice helps the chemical reaction that firms it into a jelly like consistency.
Butter is added to stop it being cloudy and foamy on top though this isn’t essential as it’s going to be hidden in the middle of our cakes.
How to make butterfly cakes
Butterfly cakes used to be really popular in the 1990’s. I remember them at every bake sale and birthday party but you don’t see them very often anymore.
Making the butterfly wings is actually really easy. Once the cakes are cool, simply take a small paring knife and cut a circle from the top of the cake with your knife diagonally pointing into the centre. This will pull out a cone shaped piece of cake. Trim away the point of the cone and then cut the remaining piece of cake in half.
This has achieved two things: (1) you now have your two butterfly wings; and (2) you now have a hole for your elderflower and gooseberry jam.
How to decorate your Elderflower and Gooseberry Butterfly Cakes
I think these cakes are best decorated with just a little icing made with greek yogurt and some of the syrup from the gooseberry jam. After placing the butterfly wings on top I then do a very light dusting of lustre dust or edible glitter.
The recipe
Elderflower and Gooseberry Butterfly Cakes
Ingredients
- 12 fairy cakes click for full ingredients list and instructions
For the gooseberry filling
- 200 g Gooseberries from you garden/allotment of course!
- 1 tbsp butter
- 0.5 lemon juice only
- 50 ml elderflower cordial
- 75 g caster sugar
For the decoration
- 200 g Icing sugar
- 2 Tbsp Greek Yoghurt
- Syrup and cooled form the stewed gooseberries.
Instructions
- Bake the basic fairy cakes following Mrs Beeton’s recipe which can be found here: Fairy Cakes
- While the cakes are baking begin stewing the gooseberries: in a large plan place the gooseberries, elderflower, lemon, sugar and butter. Place over a medium heat and allow the ingredients to dissolve.
- The gooseberries will begin to swell and burst slowly breaking down. Once this process has begun begin to stir the mix ensuring all of the juices have combined.
- In total the gooseberries will need to stew for roughly 4 mins before being removed from the heat and set to one side to cool. At this stage I recommend draining some of the syrup generated in the stewing process (roughly 4 tbsp) to one side for use in the icing.
- Once the cakes have been removed from the oven and left to cool, taking a sharp knife, roughly a centimetre from the edge, angle the knife into the centre and draw round in a circle. This will take an inverted cone shape out of the top of the cake.
- Do not discard this! We will need this later!
- Next whisk up the icing, yoghurt and cooled syrup with an electric mix until you have a stiff yet glossy icing.
- Into each hole pour some of the stewed gooseberry mixture and then top with the icing to keep the gooseberry jam a surprise!
- Cut the top of the cake we removed earlier into two to make “butterfly wings” and place into the icing!
- Dust with a sprinkling of edible glitter and there we have Elderflower and Gooseberry Butterfly Cakes!
Nutrition
More Afternoon Tea Treats
These really are perfect for garden parties, picnics, or for afternoon tea. Why not serve them alongside some of these other delicious treats.
Make it vegan
If you want to make this, or any of my other cake recipes vegan, check out my big vegan baking guide. It will show you how to make the best substitute for ingredients like egg, butter, yogurt, cream and more when you’re following some of my older recipes that I created before I turned vegan.