Dandelion & Lemon Cake
Edinburgh’s parks are ablaze with patches of sunshine yellow dandelions. Before they start to turn into dandelion clocks, I wanted to post my recipe for dandelion and lemon cake (which I first baked a few years ago, but always miss the right time to share!) An important heads up – this is a bake in two stages. FIRST you’ll need to make some dandelion cordial! But fear not, it’s fairly easy to make cordial, just click on the link and I’ll talk you through eat. Once you have your batch of cordial, proceed below to bake your delicious dandelion cake.
Ingredients
For the Cake:
- 365g plain flour (gluten free if required)
- 1/2 tsp Xanthan gum, if using GF flour
- 190g caster sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 3 large eggs
- 125ml sunflower or rape seed oil
- 225g melted butter
- 300ml milk (lactose free if required)
- zest of 1 lemon
- 60ml lemon juice (ca 1.5 lemon)
- 60ml dandelion cordial
- 40g dandelion petals
For the Icing:
- 1 cup icing sugar
- 1 tablespoon dandelion cordial
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- a couple of pinches of dandelion petals
To prepare the dandelion petals, shake the flower heads to remove any bugs. Don’t wash them, as this will wash away the pollen too. Pull off the petals and discard the green parts.
I use my Gugelhupf cake tin for this recipe, you should also be able to make it in a bundt tin. As far as I know, the main difference is that the top of a bundt tin is flatter. The main thing is you need to use a ring shaped baking tin, to make sure the cake bakes evenly all the way through.
Directions
Pre-heat you oven to 180 C (or 160 C for a fan oven).
Grease the tin with butter or baking spread, then sprinkle some flour in to the tin and shake it around until there is a light dusting of flour sticking to the grease. Shake out any excess flour. Set the tin aside.
Place the milk and lemon juice in to a mixing bowl, whisk together, and let sit for 5 minutes. The milk will thicken up in to a butter milk consistency, which is what you want to happen.
Place the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder) in to a large bowl and mix together.
Separate the eggs. Add the egg yolks to the milk mixture along with the oil, melted butter, lemon zest and dandelion cordial and whisk together until well combined.
Add the wet mixture (NOT the egg whites) to the bowl with the dry ingredients and whisk until just combined.
Place the egg whites in a separate bowl and whisk in to soft peaks, then fold in the egg whites in to the mixture. Adding the egg whites separately in this way makes the cake a little less dense.
Finally, fold in the dandelion petals until evenly dispersed.
Pour the batter in to your prepared cake tin. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 50-60 minutes. In our current oven, it usually takes 55 minutes. The cake is ready if an inserted wooden skewer comes out without any wet batter sticking to it.
Once the cake is fully cooled down, mix the icing sugar with the spoonfulls of cordial and lemon juice into a pourable glaze. If it feels to runny, add some more icing sugar. Drizzle the icing over the top of your cake, so it runs down the sides, and sprinkle with a pinch of petals whilst still wet.
Warning Note
Make sure to pick your dandelions from a spot that is free of pesticides, away from the road and car fumes, and not on a popular dog walking route (you can probably figure out why…) We have two parks near us that have fenced in, dog free zones where dandelions are allowed to grow wild, so that’s where we go to pick ours. Dandelions are fairly easy to recognise, but always be 100% sure of what you are picking – if you’re not sure, don’t risk it!
