Garden Party Tea & Cakes

I recently learned that garden centers in the UK often have cafes and serve cake and tea and it kind of blew my mind. There seems to be a general association between cake and gardens there that just doesn’t exist in the US– but I fully support it. Ever since I have been super inspired and developing cake recipes that use garden fruits and vegetables. I have included a few here, but feel free to make your favorites, zucchini bread, carrot cake, parsnip cake, beet red velvet, spinach, just about any fruit! Garden cakes for days! I even want to try a tomato cake! There are also a ton of common garden plants that are perfect for making herbal tea, so you can harvest the whole meal from your garden!  

Garden Cakes:

Lemon and Lavender Olive Oil Pound Cake 

So I know not everyone has a lemon tree in their garden, but that argument could be made for pretty much anything. And while it’s too cold to grow a lemon tree in my garden, I do have one in a pot that I wheel inside for the winter. The combination with lavender takes it over the top! 

Ingredients:

• I cup sugar
• 1 TBS grated meyer lemon zest (from 2-3 lemons)
• 2 tsp ground lavender (I grind up the buds in a coffee grinder) 
• 140g sorghum flour
• 100g almond flour
• 3 large eggs
• ½ cup greek yogurt
• ½ cup good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 TBS vanilla extract
• ¾ TBS baking powder
• ½ tsp coarse gray salt
• Lemon glaze (recipe follows)
• 2 TBS lavender buds for garnish

•      1 loaf pan

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray your loaf pan with cooking spray. 

In a large bowl rub together the sugar, lemon zest and lavender until fragrant

Whisk in all of the remaining ingredients and mix until smooth. . 

Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan and cook for 50- 55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  

Cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool completely. 

Drizzle over the glaze and sprinkle with lavender buds.

Lemon Glaze

Ingredients:

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 3 TBS lemon juice

Method:

Mix together the sugar and lemon juice.

Drizzle over cake. 

Pour the glaze over the cake and sprinkle with the lavender buds.

Naked Spinach & Mint Cake

I know, I know a spinach cake sounds scary… but spinach adds shocking green color and very little flavor. I also like to think it makes the whole business slightly more nutritious? It’s also super easy. You can add it to any white cake recipe you like– in fact I used a gluten free box mix for the cake pictured. Mint and spinach just seem to go together– I think green just reminds people of mint. And while peppermint and candycanes make me think of winter, fresh mint is pure summer. I am also so very fortunate to live in a house in which the previous owner saw fit to plant mint in the ground. Yes people still do that apparently. So I rip out massive quantities of mint pretty much every other week. The buttercream is a little more complicated because you have to plan ahead to use the fresh mint, but I won’t tell if you just add a few drops of mint extract to your favorite icing. (Although it won’t have quite the same fresh mint flavor)

Ingredients):

• 1 bag of fresh baby spinach
• your favorite white cake box mix or recipe
• fresh mint swiss buttercream icing (recipe follows)
• flowering mint stems for garnish

Method:

When you get to the “mix and add the liquid ingredients step” in your box mix or your recipe, instead simply place all the liquid ingredients that you are meant to combine (eggs, milk, oil etc.) into a blender with the spinach. Blend until smooth and super green! It will seem like a comical amount of spinach at first, but it blends down to almost nothing.

Add your now green liquids to the recipe/ mix as instructed and carry on with the rest of the recipe as normal.

Cool the cakes before icing.

Fill the layers with the Fresh Mint Buttercream (recipe follows) and spread just enough on the outside to get the “naked” cake effect and hold everything together. Run a cake scraper of offset spatula around the outside to remove any excess. Decorate with flowering mint stems.

Fresh Mint Swiss Buttercream Icing

Ingredients :

• Ingredients:
• 2 sticks of unsalted butter
• Small handful of mint leaves
• 3 egg whites
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ TBS vanilla extract

Method:

Leave the butter out long enough to soften to room temperature. 

Rinse and chop up the mint leaves. Stir them into the butter and leave on the counter for an hour or two to allow the flavors to meld. Stick in the fridge to form up until you are ready to make the buttercream. (At least overnight to let the flavors infuse fully) 

On the day you are going to make the icing let the butter come to room temp again

Put a few inches of water on the stove and bring to boil. Reduce to a simmer.

Whisk the sugar and egg white in the bowl of a stand mixer.

Place the bowl over the simmering water and continue to whisk until the sugar is melted- I stick my finger in and feel for the grains. The mixture will also change texture and start to look kind of stringy when it’s nearly done.  

Move the bowl to the mixer with a whisk attachment and mix on medium high until the sides of the bowl are cool, about 5 minutes. 

Switch the whisk for the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low add the softened butter in 8-10 additions. 

Turn the mixer back up to medium and mix for another 5 minutes. 

Mix in the vanilla at low speed.

Use right away on a cooled cake or store in the fridge. Before you use the icing from the fridge you will need to let it come back to room temperature again. 

Beetroot Red Velvet Cake

I used to make an awesome beet colored red velvet back when I ate wheat. This was my first attempt at a gluten free version, and while it was delicious, it wasn’t as red as I was hoping so I will continue to tinker with it. Getting the color to hold is all about pH, you can’t use baking soda and you can’t use dutch process cocoa because they throw things off.

Ingredients:

• 100g fine almond flour
• 140g light buckwheat flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 TBS natural cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1 15 oz can water packed beets
• 1 TBS vanilla
• 2 TBS lemon juice
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup tahini
  • eggs
  • Cream cheese glaze (recipe follows)
  • edible flowers

Method:

Preheat oven to 350° F

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl. (Flours, sugar, baking powder, cocoa and salt.)

In a food processor, add the whole can of beets and blend until they are nice and smooth. (This can take a few minutes) Add the vanilla, lemon juice, oil, tahini and eggs to the processor and blend just until smooth.

Pour the beet mixture into the bowl with the flours and stir until combined.

Pour into a a well greased bundt pan and cook until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean, around 30-40 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before glazing.

Cream Cheese Glaze

• 4 oz room temp cream cheese
• ¼ cup room temp unsalted butter 
• ¾ cup powdered sugar 
• 3-6 TSP milk 
• 1 tsp vanilla
• pinch of salt

Method:

Beat the cream cheese and butter together in the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment.

Sift in the powdered sugar. Add 3 TSP of milk, vanilla and salt. Mix to combine.

You’ll want the glaze to be drippy, add more milk a tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistancy.

Garden Tea:

Herbal Tea:

Lots of garden herbs make excellent tea. You can also add berries or dried fruit to increase your garden component. Fill a tea ball with any of the herbs on this list, or create your own mix!

• Chamomile
• Anise Hyssop
• Mint
• Lemon Balm
• Lemon Verbena
• Rose
• Bee Balm

Combine your chosen herbs and place in a tea ball. Pour hot water over and steep. 

Serve warm with milk and honey or chill for iced tea. .