Want to learn some fairy lore while I make little fairy cakes? A few years ago I made tiny cakes for a picnic in the orchard. I spent a lot of time making the cakes and decorating them with edible flowers from my garden, so naturally they featured quite a bit in the photographs and videos I took that day. For some reason I got several comments that my spread wasn't a picnic because "I only packed cakes"! Excuse me, I also packed up sandwiches, cheese, fruit, jam, apple cider, and a salad! They were in my photographs though not centered since I spent a lot less time prepping those elements. Still, I have to ask: can't a picnic just be cake? Do you need to have other elements to qualify as a picnic? I think not!
Those irksome comments however were inspiration to go back to re-make my tiny cakes and show the process in a bit more detail. I had enjoyed making them before and they reminded me of little fairy cakes, so I thought it would be fun to go back and bake them again. There's something very cottagecore and aesthetic about these cakes and I think the size makes them the perfect bite to eat. Using foraged plants is also a good excuse to spend more of the lovely springtime out in nature. Stinging nettle grows rampant around us and it's about time I put it to better use than stinging my ankles on my daily walks with Solomon! I honestly need to find more recipes that utilize that plant since it is so abundant in my area. In this recipe the stinging nettle helps color the batter of the cakes green, but the strongest flavor you'll get from the cakes is lemon. The combination makes for a very light cake perfect for spring and summer. The edible flowers mostly provide decoration and sometimes a bit of texture; I don't get much flavor from them in such small quantities but they do make the final cakes look very charming.
I hope you enjoy the video and you'll find more fairy lore about some of the flowers I used as well as one of my favorite types of fairies if you watch! You can also find my full recipe for these cakes and buttercream frosting on my Patreon page.
CONVERSATION