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.

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. .