Elderflower and Almond Cake

It’s been a while since I blogged a Make, and I apologise.
My sewing machine is STILL away being serviced. I would get very cross, but everytime I ring up for a progress report, I get a very sweet, very elderly sounding lady on the phone, and it just feels wrong to go mad at her…. Apparently, a part is broken, but it can be fixed. So I’m just waiting….

In the meantime, here is a seasonal cake recipe!

I blogged 20 Elderflower Recipes a few weeks ago, and I’ll let you into a secret-I hadn’t at the time, actually been and got any elderflower (shocked gasps from you all).
But we went about a week later, and the Smalls and I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the school field foraging and fighting over who was going to get which bit to go into their bag

I froze some, as I was reliably informed by my font of all knowledge, Twitter, that I could. And the rest I made into Elderflower cordial.
I was flicking through the Primrose Bakery Celebrations book for inspiration,

and spied their Elderflower and Coconut Cake, which I then remembered I had made before and it was pretty yummy.
BUT we had no desiccated coconut. So I substituted ground almonds instead.
And it’s pretty delicious!

This is what you need:

• 225g butter at room temperature
• 225g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 150g plain flour
• 105g ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 105ml elderflower cordial
• 105ml milk

For the icing:

• 170g butter at room temperature
• 435g icing sugar
• 75ml elderflower cordial

This is what you do:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C (160C fan/350F/gas mark 4)
• Grease and base line 2 20cm (8″) sandwich tins
• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
• Add the eggs one a time, and beat again
• Add the flour, almonds and baking powder and mix well
• Finally add the elderflower cordial and milk and mix again until it’s well incorporated
• Spoon the mix evenly between the two cake tins, and level off the surface
  
• Bake in the pre-heated oven for 17-20 minutes. If the top starts to brown too quickly, cover it with foil
• Once cooked, allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely before icing
• For the icing-mix together the butter, icing sugar and elderflower cordial. I like to whiz it for a couple of minutes to get it nice and fluffy (this does make for quite a schloppy icing-I had to put the cake in the fridge, especially as it was super hot yesterday, as my icing was oozing..!)
• Sandwich the two layers of cake tougher with just over half the icing, and then top with the remainder
• Enjoy!