This Time with Fresh Fruit

A little over a year ago I tried a recipe for gooseberry cake I had pieced together from my grandmother's life history. I had been working on converting her life history, which she had recorded on cassette tapes, from tapes to digital files.  In the process of doing that I came across the recipe and tried it out.  However, being winter at the time, I was unable to use fresh gooseberries.  I had finally ended up buying some online because it was the only place I was able to find any.  It turned out pretty good but it left me wanting to try it again with fresh berries.  But then the other day I came across an advertisement from a berry farm and remembered I had meant to try again when I would be able to use fresh gooseberries.  So I called them up and confirmed that they did have gooseberries that were on right now and available.  I talked to Brombeere and we picked a date to go!

That day arrived Saturday.  We gathered together all the stuff that we thought we'd need and piled in the car, forgetting a few things we would have liked to have with us.

Anyway, we got there, got some basic instructions in how to pick gooseberries, and hit the field.

It was a warm day, but not too terribly hot. Or so we thought.  We were there probably nearly two hours picking berries.  Truthfully, we picked more than just gooseberries, which is why it took so long. We also picked raspberries, both black and red.  But that's a different story.  Today we're mostly interested in gooseberries.

These gooseberries were a little smaller than the ones that had been in the cans.  That's okay.  I had calculated what I figured I needed and that's how many we'd picked.  I had actually decided to try making the cake and having gooseberry ice cream with it, instead of the sauce my grandma had talked about.  From what I'd figured, I thought we'd need around six cups so we picked what we figured would be just a little more than that.

Then, because it had been a long time in the heat and sun, we went for ice cream!  Can't beat that!

Later in the day, after we had run a bunch of other errands, it was time to get busy.  I had decided to do the ice cream first.  That way it could be churning while I worked on the cake.  So I got everything out and got started.

First thing to do was get all the berries off the little stems.  That was something I hadn't had to worry about when I had made this before, using canned berries.  This part took a little longer than I had expected.  Maybe bigger berries would have been quicker.  As I was working, I kept imaging my grandma and her family sitting around the table in their kitchen, working together to prepare the berries.  Good times.  Anyway, once they were off the stems I still had a little more to do with them to get them ready.

So next they went on to the stove, with some sugar and a little water.  You cook 'em until they burst.  Then I ran them through the blender to turn them into a puree.

Then I pushed the puree through a sieve to end up with a nice, clean bowl of gooseberry liquid, all ready for ice cream.

See that stuff that was left over, that didn't go through the sieve?  Makes you glad it didn't make it into the ice cream.

So, once the gooseberries had been reduced to a nice, clean liquid, they went into the fridge to cool while I worked on the next step.

That was the custard.  This is Brombeere, pointing out to me that, as they say, a watched pot never boils.  Always helping.

Despite Brombeere's watching, the custard did come to a boil.

Then the custard and the berry mixture were blended together and went into the ice cream maker canister.  We got the ice, put it all together and placed it in the sink, and packed the ice and salt all around in the bucket.  At point, I plugged in the motor and listened to it hum.  Alas, though the motor hummed along quite nicely, the canister did not turn.  As a result, the ice cream did not churn. Bummer.

After tinkering with it a while without being able to get it to work, I decided that I had already invested too much work in this ice cream to just toss it.  So I made a quick trip to the store hoping they would have an ice cream maker.  When I got there, after involving two store clerks, the only thing we found was something that looked like a kid's ice cream maker.  At least it did in the box.  And it was less than half the price I had been expecting to pay.  I figured that couldn't be a regular ice cream maker but I got it anyway.  When I got back home and unpacked it, I was glad I had gotten it.  Apparently ice cream maker technology has come a long ways in the 20-25 years since we bought our last one and they are smaller and cheaper than they used to be.  Although the canister was the same size as our old one, the bucket was much smaller, which accounted for the smaller box.  In fact, except for one little design change, I could have used our old canister in this new maker.  Anyway, I moved the custard over into the new canister and got it to churning.  Back in business!

Then it was back to picking berries off the stem again.  This time it didn't take quite as long but that is mostly because there were fewer berries.  Most of what we had picked went into the ice cream.

Remembering, how much "trash" there had been left over after preparing the berries for the ice cream, and how unappetizing it had looked sitting there in the sieve, I decided the simplest thing would be to do the berries the same way for the cake.  That's a slight departure from how Grandma's recipe went, but, even though it was a bit of work, it still seemed simpler to me that trying to clean the berries up while keeping them whole.  So that's what I did.

So I made up the batter and added the liquid berries.  At that point, the batter was just a little too runny so I added a little more flour.  Grandma's recipe said you could do that.  In fact, she said to add the flour last so you could only add enough to bring it to a "good cake dough, just a regular kind of cake dough."  So I got it to that point, added the berries and then brought it to that point again.

Then it was into the pan, and into the oven.  Meanwhile, the ice cream had been churning away nearby.

We had made ice cream when I had been down visiting Heidlebeere a week before.  That time we just let the ice cream maker run until it shut off by itself so I had expected it to go like that this time, as well.  But after the cake was in the oven cooking, and it had been over an hour since the ice cream started churning, the mixer was still running happily away.  So I stopped it, opened it up, and took a look inside.

I was pleased with what I saw.  It turned out the recipe I had been using didn't make a lot.  But down in the bottom of the canister was some really nice looking ice cream.  It looked all ready to go.  So we tried it and it was yummy!  And it was all ready to go.  Most of the time, once you turn off the ice cream maker, you have "harden" it, let it sit a while and firm up.  But this stuff was all ready to go.  So we popped it the freezer to wait while we finished up the cake, which was still in the oven.

Pretty soon the cake came out of the oven, all nice looking, and all.  We let it cool on the oven a little and then served it up with the ice cream.

It turned out really nice.  It was a fair amount of work doing it all, what with picking the berries and all the work it was cleaning them, but in the end, it was pretty nice stuff.  Well worth the effort.