Blackberry Almond Cakes with Boysenberry Icing (gf)
It’s school holidays and so rainy here in Dunedin, however it’s the perfect weather to get cosy and bake something fun and delicious! This recipe was chosen and made by Laksmi, my 7yo, (although I have made this recipe many times as different versions). Laksmi took great pleasure in the chopping of butter, weighing of ingredients, zesting and juicing of lemons and mixing the batter etc. We found blackberries in the freezer that we foraged over the summer and used a few of the amazing little beauties freeze dried boysenberries to colour and flavour the icing.
This is my gluten free variation of "Lemon, Blueberry and Almond teacakes'“ from the excellent recipe book Sweet, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh. I haven’t made the actual version in the recipe book which contains wheat as I like to roll with gluten free options as much as possible and so for cakes I usually substitute wheat for rice/tapioca flours and ground nuts such as almond or hazelnuts.
Ingredients:
Makes 12 cupcakes, around 20 madeleines or one small cake. Double this recipe for a large birthday or celebration cake.
Ingredients
150g Unsalted Butter
190g Caster Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Extract
3 Large Eggs
2 Lemons - 2tsp finely grated Zest
60ml Lemon Juice
Dry Ingredients
1/2tsp Baking powder
60g Rice Flour
30g Tapioca Flour
110g Ground Almond
1/8tsp Salt
200g Berries (or leave out if wanting a plain cake)
Icing:
Freeze Dried Berries (We used 3-4 Little Beauties boysenberries, discovered from the Nelson Farmers Market) but the Fresh as Strawberries and Raspberries would also be divine.
Juice of 1 lemon
100g Icing sugar
Instructions:
Cream butter, sugar, lemon zest, 1tsp lemon juice and vanilla for 4 minutes until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to medium.
Add eggs in small additions and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Mix together the flours, salt and almonds and add in three additions. Fold in the blueberries by hand and pour into a prepared loaf tin.
Bake for 20 minutes if cupcakes, check. Will need ~35-50 minutes if the recipe is doubled and made into a cake.
Cool, Ice and Enjoy!
Icing
3-4 dehydrated or 1/2C frozen berries.
150g of icing sugar, sifted
Juice of 1 lemon/35ml
Instructions
If the berries are frozen see if you can use berries with vibrant colour such as raspberries, boysenberries or blackcurrants, defrost and whizz up in the food processor or blender with lemon juice, strain the juice.
If using dehydrated berries, blitz them in the food processor, you can also add the lemon juice and a touch of water to make an intense berry juice.
Combine the icing sugar, lemon/berry juice together and stir until you it is a thick pouring consistency. Ours was a bit thick so didn’t drip too much. Dot berries on the top.
Cook Time: 20-25 minutes (Allow 30-35 min for cake, and longer if the recipe is doubled)
Prep time: Allow at least 40 min-to one hour to stop and taste the batter at least 7 times hehe
Variations on this recipe
I think this is a rather wonderful plain almond cake and with the addition of lemon juice and zest it is perfect. You can add mandarin, orange or lime zest. You could go orange and cardamom. It is a base for a birthday cake or a Victoria sponge situation or some sort of little cake like these. Also, this is a great cake for using up leftover ground nuts from making homemade nut milks. If you are making this cake for an occasion, you might want to use blanched ground almonds. Omit the lemon juice/zest, add some coffee and you could have a 1980’s coffee cake with coffee icing… Actually, I have no idea what era the coffee cake comes from… 50’s? YUSSSS. One day soon…
