Miniature Classic British Cakes

What better way to spend a snowy day than to bake something that reminds one of spring! In this challenge, the brief was to make 36 miniature classic British cakes. I chose what I would call a soon-to-be modern classic — lemon and elderflower cakes à la Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s wedding cake.

I’d never tried elderflower before but found the cordial light, almost citrus-y and not overpoweringly floral, overall a perfect foil for the bright, tart flavor of lemons. Elderflowers, it turns out, are the small white blossoms of the elderberry bush, which flourishes along the hedgerows of England and France. The berries are often used to make jams and jellies, and apparently both flower and berry pair well with gin!

The recipe I adapted for this bake is from a little cookbook put out by Friends of North Lodge Park, a volunteer group that runs a café in a clifftop park in Cromer, Norfolk, U.K. Of course, with the current coronavirus pandemic, the café is closed, but in better times it is stocked with baked goods donated by local home bakers. The cookbook, Will You Marry Me? and Other Recipes, caught my attention because I follow one of those bakers on Instagram. Thida Bevington used to provide not one but two of her coffee and walnut cakes for the café every week, pre-lockdown. While she has posted the recipe to her Instagram stories, I looked and looked for a print version, and this is the only source I could find.

The elderflower and lemon cake recipe in the book, however, is attributed to a baker named Jean (no last name given) who adapted it from one she clipped from a newspaper, the Weekend Eastern Daily Press, also out of Norfolk. It boasts the same flavors used in Meghan’s and Harry’s cake, which was made by Claire Ptak, an expat from California who opened her London bakery Violet in 2010.

While the elderflower cordial used in the royal wedding cake came from flowers grown on Queen Elizabeth’s own Sandringham estate, I was sadly unable to find any elderflowers growing in Wisconsin in the middle of winter. So I had to make do with a store-bought cordial, which I found at World Market. Belvoir (pronounced bee-ver in the U.K.) Fruit Farms (being rebranded as Belvoir Farm) Elderberry Cordial is made in Leicestershire, U.K., where they grow elderflowers organically on a 60-acre farm and call on locals from the surrounding community to help pick the frothy white blossoms by hand.

While lemon zest and elderflower cordial are baked into the batter of these petite cakes, the flavor is enhanced by drizzling more cordial over the warm cakes and sandwiching the layers with homemade lemon curd (for which I used this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction). Rather than frost the cakes with buttercream, I chose to top them with a light mascarpone cream scented with even more elderflower cordial.

To make sure the cakes were “identical in size and shape,” as the brief stipulates, I used muffin tins, lining each with parchment paper on the bottom to ensure they all came out without sticking. To assemble the cakes, I turned them upside down and split them horizontally, then brushed each layer with additional cordial to be certain the flavor came through. I lined the edge of the bottom layer with a circle of mascarpone cream, then filled in the middle with the rich, yellow curd. After placing the second layer on top, I piped on more cream and topped each one with a fresh raspberry.

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I was pleased with the results. The elderberry came through nicely without overwhelming. The lemon curd was a lovely complement, and overall, the flavors balanced nicely. Moist without being heavy, these cakes taste like spring and are definitely moreish! Despite the Wisconsin January blizzard, I was able to deliver cakes to surrounding friends and neighbors to positive reviews. I would recommend these cakes for any time of the year!

Next week: Savory Biscuits