Sunken gooseberry cake recipe

Serves 8

Gooseberries are at about their best right now (end of June-mid July), their tartness having turned into juicy freshness. Compared to other soft fruit and berries, they are still on the sharper-side (that expression about gooseberries being the odd-one-out must have come from somewhere), so I add a little extra sugar to the topping. This cake could just as easily be made with other fruit like raspberries, strawberries, grapes, figs; the list goes on, just leave out the caster sugar sprinkled on top. The optional semolina gives a pleasant, slightly crunchy edge to the cake, but leave it out if you don’t have any to hand. 

This could just as easily be made with frozen gooseberries too, if the fresh ones are hard to track down. 

Ingredients

200g butter, cubed, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing 

Optional: 2 tablespoons fine semolina 

100g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder 

180g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling 

Zest of a lemon 

3 medium eggs 

100g ground almonds 

200g red or green gooseberries 

25g soft light brown sugar 

40g slivered pistachios, almonds, or flaked almonds 

Method

Heat the oven to 180°c/gas mark 4. Grease a 24cm springform tin with butter and add the semolina to the tin. Tilt and tap the tin on a surface to evenly distribute the semolina, so it sticks to the butter all around the inside and tip out any excess into the food waste bin. 

Sift the flour and baking powder together in a bowl and set aside. Measure 175g of the butter into a separate mixing bowl with the caster sugar and half the lemon zest and beat until the mixture is very pale a fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the ground almonds with each egg and mixing well between each addition. Finally, stir in the remaining flour, baking powder and ground almonds. 

Pour the cake batter into the prepared tin and use a spatula to scrape as much from the bowl as possible and level the top. Place in the oven for 20 minutes to bake. After this time, remove the tin from the oven and scatter the gooseberries evenly over the top. Bake for another 10 minutes, 

During this time, melt the remaining butter in a saucepan with the brown sugar and nuts. Stir to combine evenly, then remove the cake from the oven and scatter the nut mixture over the top. Return to the oven for 15-18 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Scatter a tablespoon of caster sugar over the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven. 

Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before running a palette knife around the side, loosening the tin and lifting onto a cooling rack to cool for a further 5 minutes before slicing into 8 wedges. 

This cake is great warm or cold, with a cup of tea or scoop of ice cream, or indeed on its own at the end of a socially distanced picnic.