Fabulous Cakes at Caisson Gardens open day inspired me to bake

 The visit to Caisson gardens went superbly.  Organised by the head ponchos of The Gardening Group within Wells Tuesday WI, I was fortunate to receive a lift with four in the car, and we all met up at ' The King Willian Inn' at Tunley which I can now highly recommend.  I am going to write another post about my enjoyment at the gardens.  As I was with a great bunch of friends I didn't feel it right to get too interested in the cakes, and ask lots of questions, rather enjoying sitting down together with drinks and cake together.  There was a wide variety of cakes and the difficulty was in choosing.  They were not the usual array of the home baked staples but more like 'couture cakes' the standard matching the garden and landscape.  I had a lovely slice of probably an almondy sponge topped with a good layer of mixed summer fruit in a set matrix, and the lot topped by an even layer of meringue.  I am yet to look for such a recipe.

All that is besides the point is that I was torn: all the cakes looked perfect. Whittling down the selection to  two,  the cake I did not have was a beautifully displayed lemony and blueberry cake.  Using the usual searches I found a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi  which I printed out and went on to bake.  

This is my take on the Almond Lemon and Blueberry Cake.  I made a smaller version pro rated down to two eggs.  I found the technique of adding some of the fruit to the top after 15 minutes baking one new to be and certainly one I may well be using many times.

Strangely the recipe did not give the instructions for finishing off the cake although the icing sugar was listed.  I added extra sliced almonds before as it were fixing them with a drizzle of lemon icing. If this is the standard of cake then 'Simple' may well be the book to add to my shelf.  First I am ordering from our library to check before buying it. 

Whilst it was warm, it was served as 'pudding' with some extra blueberries, and a dollop of yogurt.  Every day since then we have had a small slice with after tea, and stored in the fridge it has got better and better, no doubt due all the almonds.