Gorse flower recipes?
Sue Bilstein
one recently in the paper or something, and stupidly forgot to clip
it. Gorse is flowering madly, and I'd like to try it out as a cooking
ingredient.
This is the closest I could find, from TVNZ:
Recipe - Regan's Gorse Cake - 28 Jun
GORSE CAKE
1.5 Cups oil
2 Cups raw sugar
4 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla
Beat together
2 Cups whole meal flour
1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, fenugreek, mixed spice, all spice.
1/2 tsp salt
3 Cups clean gorse flowers
1 Cup coconut
1 Cup chopped nuts
Sift, mix together, then pour in wet mixture
2 tsp baking soda (add last)
Bake at 180 C for around 1.5 hrs or until ready.
Ice with:
1 tsp lemon juice
Icing sugar to mix
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Sprinkle with fresh gorse flowers and then coconut.
But the recipe I'm grasping for was more like a pudding, I thought.
pystol
Marijuana would be lots more fun.
galleria
That looks like a fairly standard recipe
but instead of oil I would use butter
and 2 cups of sugar seems excessive, try 1 cup.
for two cups of flour ( I would use organic spelt flour)
this recipe seems rather light on fluid, particularly if you use buttr
instead of oil
so I would add 1/2 - 3/4 c of milk
2 tsp of baking soda seems a bit much
I'd be more inclined to sift a tsp baking powder with the flour
and maybe add 1 tsp baking soda...maybe
If you want to change the spices for any flavour you like
or you could add fruit...like sultana or date
I would be inclined to delete the nuts
If you want to make it into a pudding you could make a syrup or
custard of your flavour choice for the bottom of the bowl so it is a
self saucing desert,
or you could steam it, like a steam pud.
Alternatively you could take any recipe which you like and just add
however many cups of flowers you want to, that seems the easy option.
A _L_ P
That's the American ratio of sugar to flour - equal volume measures.
The older British >> NZ recipes had weight to weight: 4 oz sugar (half a
cup) to 4 oz (1 cup) flour. Very buttery rich recipes had a higher
weight of butter than sugar, but more often they were the same. To my
taste the American style overwhelms all other flavours with sickly
sweetness.
>
> for two cups of flour ( I would use organic spelt flour)
> this recipe seems rather light on fluid,
4 eggs though, might be OK.
> particularly if you use butter
> instead of oil
> so I would add 1/2 - 3/4 c of milk
> 2 tsp of baking soda seems a bit much
Esp with only the brown sugar to work with it. No vinegar, no cream of
tartar, no honey or golden syrup. Ugh, that excess baking soda taste!
> I'd be more inclined to sift a tsp baking powder with the flour
> and maybe add 1 tsp baking soda...maybe
> If you want to change the spices for any flavour you like
> or you could add fruit...like sultana or date
> I would be inclined to delete the nuts
>
> If you want to make it into a pudding you could make a syrup or
> custard of your flavour choice for the bottom of the bowl so it is a
> self saucing desert,
> or you could steam it, like a steam pud.
>
> Alternatively you could take any recipe which you like and just add
> however many cups of flowers you want to, that seems the easy option.
Wouldn't it be best to put the sugar and flowers in a blender and chop
them together so the pieces of flower would be small and spread through?
It would be easier to eat.
A L P
galleria
Is that so?
I've never heard of two cups of sugar in cakes before, well that might
explain why shop brought muffins and cakes are so sweet and bland.
There's nothing like a good old fashioned edmonds cookbook recipe for
making cakes etc.
> > for two cups of flour ( I would use organic spelt flour)
> > this recipe seems rather light on fluid,
>
> 4 eggs though, might be OK.
>
> > particularly if you use butter
> > instead of oil
> > so I would add 1/2 - 3/4 c of milk
> > 2 tsp of baking soda seems a bit much
>
> Esp with only the brown sugar to work with it. No vinegar, no cream of
> tartar, no honey or golden syrup. Ugh, that excess baking soda taste!
God nothing worse than that, I was visiting somewhere once, can't
recall where or the occassion, what did stick in my memory bank was
that there were some homemade cakes and I can't imagine how it
happened but the person who made them hadn't stirred the BS in
properly, it must have been incredibly lumpy, so may have been old, or
subject to some sort of dampness, maybe the lid wasn't on properly,
any way......there was a massive lump of baking soda in the cake.
yuck it was horrible.
> > I'd be more inclined to sift a tsp baking powder with the flour
> > and maybe add 1 tsp baking soda...maybe
> > If you want to change the spices for any flavour you like
> > or you could add fruit...like sultana or date
> > I would be inclined to delete the nuts
>
> > If you want to make it into a pudding you could make a syrup or
> > custard of your flavour choice for the bottom of the bowl so it is a
> > self saucing desert,
> > or you could steam it, like a steam pud.
>
> > Alternatively you could take any recipe which you like and just add
> > however many cups of flowers you want to, that seems the easy option.
>
> Wouldn't it be best to put the sugar and flowers in a blender and chop
> them together so the pieces of flower would be small and spread through?
> It would be easier to eat.
I imagine it would, depending on the flavour and texture of the
flowers.
I don't know that gorse flowers would be particularly scrummy
if they were we'd have probably heard about them by now
and there'd likely be more recipes about
HEY!
there might be a real gap in the gorse flower recipe market
this could be the answer to NZ's economic woes
could start by experimenting and write a gorse flower recipe book
it might really take off
> A L P- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Sue Bilstein
wrote:
Thanks for useful comments. I will probably test this recipe - given
that I can't find the one I vaguely remember.
>>
>> for two cups of flour ( I would use organic spelt flour)
>> this recipe seems rather light on fluid,
I have this in mind to serve to a friend who is gluten-intolerant. I
thought I'd use rice flour instead of the wheat.
>
>4 eggs though, might be OK.
>
>> particularly if you use butter
>> instead of oil
>> so I would add 1/2 - 3/4 c of milk
>> 2 tsp of baking soda seems a bit much
>
>Esp with only the brown sugar to work with it. No vinegar, no cream of
>tartar, no honey or golden syrup. Ugh, that excess baking soda taste!
If you did the golden-syrup, milk trick with the baking soda it would
work though, wouldn't it? I have several good cake recipes that work
with 2 tsp baking soda.
>> I'd be more inclined to sift a tsp baking powder with the flour
>> and maybe add 1 tsp baking soda...maybe
>> If you want to change the spices for any flavour you like
>> or you could add fruit...like sultana or date
>> I would be inclined to delete the nuts
>>
>> If you want to make it into a pudding you could make a syrup or
>> custard of your flavour choice for the bottom of the bowl so it is a
>> self saucing desert,
>> or you could steam it, like a steam pud.
>>
>> Alternatively you could take any recipe which you like and just add
>> however many cups of flowers you want to, that seems the easy option.
>
>Wouldn't it be best to put the sugar and flowers in a blender and chop
>them together so the pieces of flower would be small and spread through?
> It would be easier to eat.
I'm going to try with whole flowers, just to see what it's like.
Dafydd
i heard gorse flowers are full of iron...
an acquired taste though imo...
i rely on my bees to harvest...
I reckon the gorse gives them a good boot
early on in the season
A _L_ P
Gorse - Ulex spp - also known as Furze or Whin, is a tough, spiny shrub
found on heaths, roadsides and waste places.
The bright yellow flowers are mostly produced in early spring, but it's
nearly always possible to find a few at any time of the year - even in
the depths of winter.
On the bush, they have a smell reminiscent of coconut or ground almonds.
When you gather a bunch of them together in a container, a number of
more complex, fruity aromas are noticeable.
They're supposedly edible in salads - but I've tried them before and I
was quite disappointed - they just taste bitter and uninteresting. So I
decided to try using them to make a tisane.
I picked about half a pint of flowers (at the expense of a few painful
jabs from the wicked thorns).
After leaving the flowers open on the plate for a few minutes (to let a
few small insects escape), I steeped them in boiling water, covered with
a lid, for five minutes.
I strained off the liquid and added a little lemon juice and a half
teaspoon of sugar. (The lemon juice changed the colour from deep, vivid
yellow to the paler shade in the photo below)
The resulting drink is good - slightly astringent, it has a fresh,
fruity (almost melon-like) flavour, with a spicy resinous backnote, and
a complex herbal aroma all of its own, which is difficult to describe or
compare to anything.
It's great as a hot beverage, but it would also work well chilled and
served with ice and a sprig of mint, I think
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A L P