Blueberry and Elderflower Cake

This Blueberry and Elderflower cake is a deliciously sweet and tangy combination of two of my favourite summer ingredients. The soft cake layers are separated with creamy Elderflower buttercream and blueberries, and once you have prepared your ingredients, its a very easy recipe to follow and is sure to be a wonderful showstopper every time.

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It's my daughter's 1st birthday this week, and we had a small party over the weekend to celebrate. It was wonderful to finally be able to gather indoors in a small group, and give her the chance to get to interact with people in ways she hasn't really been able to do before. The party had a little bit of a wild, outdoorsy, mushroom theme to it, and all of the cakes and biscuits that I managed to make included foraged ingredients of some kind.

I knew straight away that I wanted to make an Elderflower and Blueberry cake as the birthday cake - I didn't have to worry too much about whether she would eat it, as she doesn't actually like cake at all! Having never made it before, I had a little test bake a few weeks ago and decided it needed to be four tiers to make sure everyone could have more than a slither - it ended up being a little too much for a small party so it would definitely be enough for about 15 people to have a good slice.

The cake layers are sandwiched together with a deliciously creamy elderflower buttercream and a good helping of sweet blueberries - not from my garden I might add, my blueberry bushes are still quite juvenile and didn't even produce enough fruit to fill this cake! I have a tendency to just 'throw' butter icing together, but the measurements below should be enough for what is needed for this cake.

It is a plant based recipe, but without any weird ingredients, and other than having to preemptively make the elderflower syrup, most of the ingredients you'll probably already have if you like to bake. It looks like an incredible amount of ingredients, but remember that it makes four tiers! Its much easier to work with if you make it in two batches - just half the ingredients - rather than trying to make it all in one go!

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Blueberry and Elderflower Cake

Ingredients for the cake:

600g self-raising flour

200g block butter

200g sugar

460ml milk of your own choosing, I tend to use oat milk but use whatever you have on hand.

150g elderflower Syrup

1tbsp apple cider vinegar or similar

2tbsp vanilla essence

200g blueberries

Ingredients for the butter icing:

700g icing sugar

300g Stork baking block

1tbsp vanilla essence

Elderflower syrup to personal taste. **

1. Preheat the oven to 180℃ and prepare a couple of 9 inch round cake tins by either lining with greaseproof paper or by greasing the bottom and sides with butter.

2. In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

3. Add a little bit of flour to the bowl and mix. Alternate with the milk, mixing lightly until they have evenly blended together to create a thick batter.

4. Add the vinegar and elderflower syrup and mix to incorporate, followed by the vanilla essence.

5. Carefully pour the batter into the prepared cake tins and bake for around 40 minutes until golden brown. Insert a toothpick into the centre of the cakes to make sure they are completely baked all the way through. Once baked, remove from the tin and leave to cool on a cooling rack.

6. While the cake is cooling, make the butter icing. In a large bowl, or using an electric mixer, add the butter and work in a little bit of icing sugar at a time so as not to create clouds of it! Add the elderflower syrup and vanilla essence and mix to blend all the way though.

7. Once the cakes have completely cooled, spread a generous layer of icing sugar or use a piping bag to make things a little easier, over three of the layers. Spread the blueberries evenly over the icing, pressing them in slightly. You don't want to completely cover the icing in blueberries, I just place them to make sure that every slice will get at least a couple.

8. Very carefully sandwich the layers together. Press a few blueberries into the icing around the outside of the cake, and I used what was left over to add decoration to the top, along with a sprinkling of icing sugar and a few sprigs of gypsophilia (not edible!).