Chefs must be up against it thinking of with new words for their creations. Recently I’ve come across ‘shrub’ as a drink – and now ‘buckle’ as a cake. Anyway, I have now made both using fruit from the garden. I made two shrubs in autumn: grape and cranberry – now languishing in the fridge waiting to be used in a mocktail, perhaps. A lot of effort for little result, really. The buckle, on the other hand, is rather delicious as a dessert. It consists of a chocolate cake base, blackcurrant middle and crumble topping.
I found the recipe on the internet (thank you tinandthyme.uk) and made slight alterations: I used all the blackcurrants I picked this afternoon rather than just 250g, and added crumbled weetbix to the topping.
I used to bake my blackcurrants in a shortcake using the gooseberry shortcake recipe from the Edmonds Cookbook, but it’s nice to have a change.
It would be nice to have gooseberries. Sadly, although I have four gooseberry bushes, there was just one solitary gooseberry this year. What am I doing wrong? I thought maybe they are too shaded, but there was a very productive gooseberry bush right underneath an old pine tree in a place where I lived once. Looking on the internet, I can see that lots of people have the same problem and there are lots of suggestions – some of which I’ve tried in the past. I’ve become too afraid to prune them in case I cut off the fruiting wood.
Anne-O-tations 