Elderflower Pinenut Cake Recipe

When the heavenly scent of elderflowers fills countryside trails in late spring, I go hiking with my family and pack a small plastic bag and kitchen gloves along for foraging. You just never know when you are going to stumble upon wild mint, sea samphire ou fresh nettles. However, fresh elderflowers are the real prize when the sun shines and makes they are just perfect for tea time. Back from a coastal hike last Sunday, I saved a bunch of blossoms to create this elderflower pinenut cake recipe. It’s gluten-free too, with a pleasant crunch on the outside and a texture that calls for a spoonful of blackcurrant jam at tea time or breakfast.

As with all foraging, I urge you not to deplete the trees you’ll be picking from as you need to leave enough for the birds–and for elderberries to ripen.

Foraging Elderflowers

This was our hike, a walk along the coastal bluffs of Sussex with open English Channel views most of the way and brilliantly green vegetation. It was the first day of sunshine after a miserably cold and dreary week and honestly felt like summer. My girls made daisy chains along the way and took tons of pictures of the sea. Had we had more time, we would have ended with our feet in the water by the chalk cliffs, for sure. Elderflower bushes dotted the landscape, sometimes lining the trail, sometimes spread over open hillsides, usually keeping company to glorious stinging nettles. As you can guess, I was very excited to find so many blossoming elder trees along our trails.

This is what elderflowers look like, if you’ve never seen them. They smell of lemon and honey and sometimes (when a bit “old”) of cat pee. It’s the pollen that makes them so fragrant. At home, we’ve made elderflower cordial and used it in lemonades but we hadn’t made a cake out of them yet.

I harvested only fully blossomed flowers and only a cluster or two per tree. To get rid of any undesirables and insects, I shook every cluster before bagging it. On our train ride home, my bag smelled wonderful and I couldn’t wait to make this cake.

As you will see, my recipe is quite unique in that I use fresh elderflowers on the stem directly in the cake, instead of making a cordial first which might make it quite sweet. It’s also like eating your greens but not quite. I hope that you will enjoy it and raise a cup of tea or sparkling water to the quintessential flower of early British summers!

Elderflower Pinenut Cake Recipe

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

45 mins

Total time

1 hour

This elderflower pinenut cake smells like sunshine and early summer, combining the sweet taste of elderflowers with yummy pinenuts and a polenta base for a gluten-free treat. It's perfect with a cup of tea and, if you feel so inclined, with a spoonful of blackcurrant or berry jam.

Author: Frog Mom

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: French

Serves: 8 persons

Ingredients

250g/1 cup + 2 tablespoons butter
250g/1 cup + 2 tablespoons caster sugar
200g/1½ cups ground almonds
150g/ ¾ cups pinenuts
200g/1¼ cups polenta or coarse cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons of plain yogurt
1 cup of fresh elderflowers, shaken and separated in tiny clusters, without the main steam
3 large eggs
1 lemon

Instructions

Preheat the oven at 180C/400F.
Melt the butter in a bowl, then add all the ingredients except the lemon and elderflowers.
Stir and add the lemon peel as well as the juice of the lemon.
Add the elderflowers last. Combine.
Bake in buttered springform cake tin, 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Wait until barely room temperature to eat.