Almond & Elderflower Cookies : heavenly little biscuits!

Following on from a number of requests, here's the recipe for the cookies that went so beautifully with the Gooseberry Cream & Elderflower Jelly Pots.

The basic recipe is a Rachel Allen basic vanilla shortbread biscuit one, with the elderflower cordial instead of the vanilla and with some ground almonds added.

It really doesn't get any easier than this - unless you make use of a Kenwood Chef, like I did.  Well, it is helpful for when you run out of mixing power in your arms!

ALMOND & ELDERFLOWER COOKIES  (Makes around 18)

Ingredients :

200g softened butter

100g icing sugar

200g plain flour

half a tsp of baking powder

2 tsp elderflower cordial

100g ground almonds

caster sugar, for sprinkling.

Method :

1.  In a bowl, cream the butter with the sifted icing sugar until light and fluffy.

2.  Sift in the plain flour and baking powder, along with the elderflower cordial and  ground almonds.

3.  Mix them all in, only stirring as much as is necessary. Too much stirring will result in hard, tough biscuits.

4.  Once they are all combined, lay a large piece of cling film onto the work surface and tip the dough into the middle. Quickly form the dough into a sausage shape and roll it up in the cling film, twisting the ends tightly – so compressing the contents.

5.  Place in the refrigerator for a half an hour until firm, then pre-heat the oven to 180deg C (Gas Mark 4).

6.  Remove the cling film and slice into rounds of about a half centimetre thickness.

7.  Place the rounds onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper.  Sprinkle with a little caster sugar and bake in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes until light golden brown.

8.  Remove from the oven and give them a second or two to firm up, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Try hard not to eat them all! 

Saving the best until last - Gooseberry Cream & Elderflower Jelly Pots

Have I told you about our Gooseberry Bush?  We've only had it for a year and following on from when we bought it and it had around 15 or so small gooseberries, this year it has gone completely mad and there are just bucketloads of gooseberries on it!

We're total novices as regards growing gooseberries, so it's all been a voyage of gooseberry discovery.

This last weekend, I thought that perhaps if we took off the biggest of the gooseberries then it would give the smallest ones a chance to reach their full potential.

So, out went Hubby in the pouring rain on Sunday morning and picked 150g of the sharpest most tongue tinglingly beautiful little green gooseberries in the world, all so that I could make the Gooseberry Cream & Elderflower Jelly Pots recipe that I'd found on BBC Good Food website, where you can find the recipe.

Having picked the little green caterpillar out of the dish and given them a jolly good wash, I set to with the topping & tailing, which is one of the most tedious jobs ever.  Although, with the promise of a delicious dessert as a reward, it's a pain worth undertaking.

The gooseberries cooked really very quickly - far quicker than I was expecting, in fact.  They didn't turn to mush, thankfully, but just be aware that they do cook extremely quickly!  I'm sure it's not just my gooseberries that do it.


I was fascinated by the way the cream behaved, too.  Just the addition of some 25g of sugar, then boiled and simmered for 3 minutes changed the character of the cream immensely.  Isn't cooking just the most fascinating thing ever?  I was amazed at how quickly the cream began to set, once you'd incorporated the gooseberries.


I had my first taste around this stage - and knew we were onto a winner.


The elderflower jelly was also incredibly easy to make, although I did make two mistakes with it.  The first was that I made way too much, believing that it wouldn't make any difference.  In truth, the sweetness of the elderflower cordial was so intense that it quickly became apparent that there was too much of it there.  However, it was so gorgeous that it was forgivable.  The second error was that I poured it when it was really too hot still, which caused the top layer of the cream to begin disintegrating.  This made the jelly a little opaque, which was unfortunate from the look of the thing, but didn't affect its flavour at all.


With the Almond & Elderflower Cookies that I'd made to go with the pots, the whole thing was (and I quote Hubby) a "thing of beauty".

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