a wonderful crop

Despite being very neglected, our gooseberry bush has produced a wonderful crop of big juicy fruit. It is extremely prickly though, so it takes care to pick them. Woven in among it, also neglected are some raspberry canes, and also a currant bush. It was a white currant, but this year the fruit are all pink. I’ve been very sensitive to light and sunlight over the last few weeks, so today is the first time I have been fruit picking, and I got a couple of pounds of mixed berries and currants.

I had it in my head that I fancied a gooseberry cake, and tried to find a recipe and the first one I came across was so simple – brown sugar sprinkled on a greased paper in the bottom of a cake tin, gooseberries on top, and then an ordinary sponge recipe spread on top.  And the result – after baking at gas mark 4 or 5 for about forty mins? Delicious! Shame we didn’t have any clotted cream or custard!!!

• 1 lb or thereabouts of gooseberries, redcurrants, raspberries – or any summer fruit you have
• 6 oz each of butter/marg, castor sugar, self-raising flour
• a couple of ounces or as much as you need brown sugar, I used muscovado
• 3 eggs

1. line a deep baking tray with very well buttered double thickness baking parchment, and generously scatter with muscovado sugar
2. scatter your fruit
3. cream butter/marg and castor sugar
4. add alternately flour and eggs and fold in
5. spread cake mixture on top of fruit
6. bake for 35-40 mins at gas mark 4 or 5