Flavours
Created from what Somerset has to offer through the seasons, this tasting menu highlights the area at its absolute best.
Pick your six favourite flavours, or choose all twelve. If you have something completely different in mind, a new flavour can be created around you instead.
Lemon
Lemon sponge, layered with tart Sicilian lemon marmalade and finished with lemon Swiss meringue buttercream.
Victoria Sponge
Roasted vanilla bean sponge filled with raspberry compote and layered with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. A classic.
Chocolate Fudge
Dark, dense chocolate fudge cake with milk chocolate ganache infused with Cornish sea salt, and a dark chocolate buttercream.
Carrot and Apple
Carrot and apple cake filled with roasted hazelnuts, sultanas infused with Thatchers cider and layered with salted caramel and roasted vanilla bean buttercream.
Pear and Caramel
Roasted vanilla bean sponge with a vanilla-infused pear compote, finished with a rich caramel buttercream.
Strawberry and White Chocolate
Vanilla bean sponge with Cheddar strawberry compote, layered with white chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.
Woodland Berry
Dark chocolate fudge cake filled with wild berry compote and layered with hazelnut praline buttercream.
Blueberry, Lavender and Earl Grey
Earl Grey sponge filled with blueberry compote, finished with lavender-infused buttercream.
Plum and Ginger
Roasted vanilla bean sponge soaked in ginger syrup, with cherry plum compote, finished with stem ginger buttercream.
Elderflower and Lemon Honey Cake
A twelve-layer cake made up of local honey sponge, lemon marmalade and elderflower-infused cream, in the style of a Ukrainian medovik.
Cherry and Chocolate
Rich dark chocolate fudge cake, black cherry compote and dark chocolate buttercream.
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Fig and Coffee
Coffee sponge filled with jammy black fig compote, finished with coffee buttercream.
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The Ingredients
Most of what goes into this menu grows not far from where I was raised. The apples in the Carrot and Apple cake come from my parents' garden, and the sultanas are soaked in Thatchers, a cider I've known my whole life. I remember it being made in a shed in the next village over, long before it became what it is now, and the orchards that supplied it are the ones I grew up around. My parents' pear tree has a fruiting season so short I have to time it exactly right, usually a week or two, before I go and pick the lot for the pear compote. Their fig tree does something similar in high summer, producing the best figs I've ever tasted, which go straight into the Fig and Coffee cake. There's a cherry plum tree in our own garden, and every summer I'm out gathering its fruit before the dogs beat me to it.
Cheddar has its own food history worth knowing, and not just for its cheese. It was once famous across the country for its strawberries, carried out by train on what became known as the Strawberry Line. I still collect strawberries from stalls around Cheddar and freeze them at their best for the Strawberry and White Chocolate cake. The lavender in the Blueberry, Lavender and Earl Grey buttercream is grown there too, while the blueberries come from growers across the South West. The raspberries are grown locally too, picked and frozen at their peak so they taste as they should long after the season has passed.
Some ingredients I gather myself, on foot. Towards the end of August I collect whatever the hedgerows are offering: blackberries, sloes, damsons, wild cherries and blackcurrants, all for the Woodland Berry cake, and make my own hazelnut praline to go with it. The elderflowers in the Elderflower and Lemon Honey Cake are foraged on morning walks with the dogs and turned into a cordial I use to infuse the cream.
That cake owes something to my husband too, who grew up in Ukraine. It was his mother who first introduced me to medovik, and the twelve-layer honey cake on this menu is my version of it, built the same way, with my own flavours running through it.
What I don't grow or forage myself, I choose carefully. The chocolate comes from producers who work responsibly with the farmers behind it, and the butter, eggs, flour and milk are all sourced locally too.
Inspired by the flavours of Somerset, one cake at a time.