Midsummer's Eve Cake
"[S]ay, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat" - Titania to Bottom, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Growing up in Wiltshire, I'm used to seeing people make the pilgrimage to pagan sights such as Avebury for the summer solstice. I'm fascinated by the folklore and fancy evoked by Midsummer, captured by Shakespeare in his famous play. This cake is the summer edition of my Winter Sun Cake. Inspired by Shakespeare's script, this cake captures the essence of the play through the food that delights the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania, having fallen in love with Bottom, commands the fairies to see to Bottom's every wish: "Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, / With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; / The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees." In my cake, you'll find apricots, mulberries, and honey; it's also decorated with delicate multi-coloured pollen. The honey is complemented perfectly by the thyme, itself another reference to the play: Oberon remarks that Titania sleeps on a bank "where the wild thyme blows". Fitting for this romantic cake, there's also glimmers of bright red cherry throughout the sponge. In the play, cherries are the food of romance and of female friendship: Demetrius describes Helena's lips as "kissing cherries", and Helena describes growing up with Hermia as "a double cherry, seeming parted,/ But yet an union in partition; / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart." For that extra bit of magic, the icing carries a hint of lemon sherbet. For this, I simply used a packet of Barratt's Sherbet Dib Dab. Inspired by Shakespeare, I don't believe in creative or aesthetic hierarchies.
This cake also reminds me of another literary reference to 'Old Midsummer's Eve', in Thomas Hardy's novel The Woodlanders. Having read Jude the Obscure when I was at university, I recently spent a summer reading my way through Hardy, and was particularly taken with this novel. In Little Hintock it is tradition that, at midnight on Midsummer's Eve, the 'frisky maidens' of the village attempt a 'spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future partners for life'. Each girl carries a handful of hemp seeds into the deep recesses of the wood, part of the 'black-art' of this occasion. As the Great Hintock clock strikes the 'significant hour', the girls rush out of the wood, into the arms of men who 'lurked' unbeknownst to the women in the bushes. Like many of these men, the family of the heroine Grace decide to give Providence a little nudge, and arrange it so that Grace runs into the arms of the seemingly respectable Fitzpiers, tragically depriving Grace of her destiny with Mr Giles Winterborne and condemning her to a marriage with a cheat. If you do revive this tradition for Midsummer's Eve, just remember to keep out of the way of any Fitzpiers...
Ingredients
For the cake
For the icing
Equipment
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan. Cut the fruit into small pieces. Wash and dry the fruit and toss, with the lemon zest, in 30g of the plain flour.
2. Lightly whisk the honey and eggs.
"[S]ay, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat" - Titania to Bottom, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Growing up in Wiltshire, I'm used to seeing people make the pilgrimage to pagan sights such as Avebury for the summer solstice. I'm fascinated by the folklore and fancy evoked by Midsummer, captured by Shakespeare in his famous play. This cake is the summer edition of my Winter Sun Cake. Inspired by Shakespeare's script, this cake captures the essence of the play through the food that delights the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania, having fallen in love with Bottom, commands the fairies to see to Bottom's every wish: "Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, / With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; / The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees." In my cake, you'll find apricots, mulberries, and honey; it's also decorated with delicate multi-coloured pollen. The honey is complemented perfectly by the thyme, itself another reference to the play: Oberon remarks that Titania sleeps on a bank "where the wild thyme blows". Fitting for this romantic cake, there's also glimmers of bright red cherry throughout the sponge. In the play, cherries are the food of romance and of female friendship: Demetrius describes Helena's lips as "kissing cherries", and Helena describes growing up with Hermia as "a double cherry, seeming parted,/ But yet an union in partition; / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart." For that extra bit of magic, the icing carries a hint of lemon sherbet. For this, I simply used a packet of Barratt's Sherbet Dib Dab. Inspired by Shakespeare, I don't believe in creative or aesthetic hierarchies.
This cake also reminds me of another literary reference to 'Old Midsummer's Eve', in Thomas Hardy's novel The Woodlanders. Having read Jude the Obscure when I was at university, I recently spent a summer reading my way through Hardy, and was particularly taken with this novel. In Little Hintock it is tradition that, at midnight on Midsummer's Eve, the 'frisky maidens' of the village attempt a 'spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future partners for life'. Each girl carries a handful of hemp seeds into the deep recesses of the wood, part of the 'black-art' of this occasion. As the Great Hintock clock strikes the 'significant hour', the girls rush out of the wood, into the arms of men who 'lurked' unbeknownst to the women in the bushes. Like many of these men, the family of the heroine Grace decide to give Providence a little nudge, and arrange it so that Grace runs into the arms of the seemingly respectable Fitzpiers, tragically depriving Grace of her destiny with Mr Giles Winterborne and condemning her to a marriage with a cheat. If you do revive this tradition for Midsummer's Eve, just remember to keep out of the way of any Fitzpiers...
Ingredients
For the cake
- 170g glace cherries
- 110g dried black mulberries
- 110g dried apricots
- 1 lemon, zest and juice of half
- 130g plain flour (divided into 30g and 100g)
- 120g runny honey
- 3 eggs
- 230g butter
- 30g caster sugar
- 60g cornflour
- 100g ground almonds
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon thyme
- 1 tablespoon milk
For the icing
- 150g full-fat cream cheese
- 100g Greek yoghurt
- 23g sachet Dib Dab lemon sherbet
- Pollen, to decorate (optional)
Equipment
- Cake tin (approx. 20cm x 5cm deep), bottom and sides lined with baking parchment
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan. Cut the fruit into small pieces. Wash and dry the fruit and toss, with the lemon zest, in 30g of the plain flour.
2. Lightly whisk the honey and eggs.
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3. Beat the butter and caster sugar together using an electric whisk until light and fluffy, and then very gradually incorporate the honey-egg mixture, a dribble at a time, whisking fully between additions.
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4. Mix the dry ingredients together: the flour, almonds, cornflour, baking powder, salt and the lemon thyme.
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5. Using a metal spoon, fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture, trying not to knock out the air. Mix in the lemon juice and milk. The mixture should just drop from the spoon.
6. Fold in the fruit and then pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin, carving out a small dip in the middle, to prevent a dome-shaped cake, and then put it in the oven. Immediately reduce the temperature to 150 fan and cook for about 1 hour. Half way through the bake (30 minutes), reduce the heat to 140 fan. Cover with foil if the top is browning too quickly.
7. Leave the cake to cool in the tin.
6. Fold in the fruit and then pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin, carving out a small dip in the middle, to prevent a dome-shaped cake, and then put it in the oven. Immediately reduce the temperature to 150 fan and cook for about 1 hour. Half way through the bake (30 minutes), reduce the heat to 140 fan. Cover with foil if the top is browning too quickly.
7. Leave the cake to cool in the tin.
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8. Once cool, beat the cream cheese, Greek yoghurt and sherbet together with an electric whisk. and spoon over the top of the cake, and then sprinkle the pollen over the top.
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