Saturday, July 21, 2012

A simple marzipan and gooseberry cake recipe

Gooseberry and marzipan cake / Tikrikook martsipaniga / Martsipani-karusmarjakook

The gooseberry season has begun and here's one of my favourite cakes for using up those gooseberries (you'll find more delicious ways of using gooseberries at the end of this post). It's a simple sponge cake, made special by the generous amount of sour gooseberries and tiny chewy bits of cooked marzipan.

You'll need a small sheet pan for this cake, about 25x35 cm (10 inch x 14 inch) in size.

Trivia: Did you know that the French call gooseberries the "mackerel berries" (groseille a macqueraux)? Neither did I...

Marzipan and gooseberry cake 
(Tikri-martsipanikook)
Serves about 20

4 large free-range eggs
250 g caster sugar (about 300 ml)
150-200 g marzipan
250 g all-purpose/plain flour (about 400 ml)
a pinch of salt

Topping:
500 ml gooseberries, rinsed, topped and tailed (2 cups)
50 g cold butter (about 2 Tbsp)
demerara brown sugar or pearl sugar

To serve:
icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
vanilla custard/creme anglaise (optional)

 Gooseberry marzipan cake / Tikri-martsipanikook / Karusmarjakook martsipaniga

Whisk the eggs and sugar until pale, thick and fluffy.
Grate the marzipan coarsely (you can put the marzipan into freezer for half an hour to make grating easier), or simply cut or crumble into small chunks. Fold into the egg and sugar mixture.
Fold in the flour and salt, stir gently until combined.
Line a Swiss roll tin (ca 25x35 cm) with a parchment paper or butter generously and dust with flour or semolina.
Spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin. Scatter the gooseberries on top, then sprinkle with sugar and dot with small pieces of butter (feel free to use your grater here again).
That's how it will look:

 Marzipan and gooseberry cake / Martsipani-tikrikook / Karusmarjakook martsipaniga

Bake in a pre-heated 200C/390 F oven for about 35-45 minutes, until the cake is golden brown.

Let cool a little, then cut into squares and dust generously with an icing sugar.

Other gooseberry recipes:
Gooseberry tart with a sweetened condensed milk topping
Gooseberry fruit soup aka gooseberry kissel
Carrot and gooseberry jam
Gooseberry chutney
Red gooseberry sorbet
Coconut gooseberry clafoutis @ The Kitchn

7 comments:

Katarina said...

What a lovely cake! Gooseberries brings back childhood memories!

Andrew said...

marzipan AND goosberries - would never have thoguth of combining the two. Shame I've eaten all my allotment-grown gooseberries now but then I did only manage to produce about 12!

Anonymous said...

Pille,
See tikrikook kolab vaga maitsvalt! Milliseid muid marju sa soovitad selles koogis kasutada?
Tikreid ei ole USAs alati saada.
Piret

Gloria Baker said...

Love Marzipan Nami and love this recipe and I love your new header))
Hu8ggs from Chile

ChichaJo said...

Lovely Pille! I have never tasted a gooseberry in my life can you believe? Sigh...this and your cloudberry posts make me dream of going back to Scandinavia...

Yumgoggle said...

Wow! This looks delicious...Thans for sharing a lot of gooseberries recipes. I'd love to try them all. Now that I have checked, I dont have a lot of gooseberries recipes in my file. Gotta start collecting them. And start testing them in my kitchen. I am sure my husband will enjoy tasting and perhaps finishing all of them ;)

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David said...

Hi Pille,
I made this recipe but used sour cherries instead of gooseberries, I think it turned out very well. I was a bit skeptical that such a big cake could work without a raising agent, but it was lovely and fluffy. Thanks kindly for the recipe.