Honey Oaty Wholemeal Cake with Strawberries and Mint

So, what of the strawberries that we bought at the Farmers' Market yesterday?

Well, they looked so delicious that I bought 2 punnets. As with the asparagus, it meant I had enough to do 'something' with some of them rather than just wait for Blue to inhale them.

River Cottage Everday came up with the wonderful and delicious puddingy goods.


Strawberries and Mint - I followed the 'recipe' such as it is, word for word - for 500 g strawberries, hull and halve (or quarter if very big) the strawbs and sprinkle over 2 tablespoons of caster sugar. Leave for a few minutes, then add a tablespoon of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of chopped mint. We have mint growing like weeds under our apple tree, so anything with mint in is a good thing.



Once you've added the mint, leave for at least an hour - Hugh recommends 3-4 hrs as ideal.

The cake was a little more of an adventure as I had to improvise on the ingredients, and I didn't quite follow Hugh's method because I was rushing a little and didn't read it properly feeling adventurous.

The original recipe appeared in the Guardian in 2008, if you want to go back to the expert. If not, here is my version:

Honey Oaty Wholemeal Cake

Ingredients: 300g margarine, 250g goldencaster sugar, 3 large eggs, 150g fine wholemeal flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 100g ground almonds, 50 g oats, 50g flaked almonds, about 2.5 tbsp runny honey

Method: Pre-heat the oven to 170 C, Grease and line a 23cm spring form cake tin, and placeon a baking sheet. Beat the marg and sugar together till very pale and fluffy. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add the eggs one at a time into the creamed marg and sugar. With each egg, add a third of the flour/baking powder and beat in well, scraping the sides down between each egg if necessary. Fold in the ground almonds and oats, then scrape into the prepared tin. Bang the tin down a couple of times to spread out the mixture, then scatter the flaked almond over the top.

Bake in the oven until a skewer (or whatever you use for this sort of thing) comes out clean. Hugh reckons about 45 mins, but it was closer to an hour for me, and I increased the heat to 180 at the 45 min point because it really didn't look cooked. I also covered the cake loosely with foil at that point to stop the top burning.

When the cake is done, remove from the oven and drizzle the honey all over it. Leave to cool.

It will be gorgeous and moist on the inside, with a lovely wholesome smell.

Serve with the macerated strawberries which by now will be lovely and sweet but minty, and slightly syrupy, and a dollop of Greek yoghurt. I used 0% fat, because I'm trying to lose some weight. Couldn't you tell??