Fruit Salad Cake
This fruit salad cake has a biscuit base, topped with a blend of yoghurt and double cream, and lots and lots of fruit.
This was another experiment.
I love a whipped up mix of lemon juice, cream, mint, and stem ginger in syrup. You can leave it to set sort of mousse-like. I really like it.
You know the topping for the chocolate goodness cake? That is a mix of yoghurt, fresh cream and vanilla bean paste. If you leave it for a few hours it really sets like a mousse. I love it. I actually add more of the topping than is in the recipe. It’s what really makes the cake just so so good.
And because that is so good I’ve also tried using yoghurt instead of the lemon juice. But this isn’t quite sharp enough for me. Though it is lovely with a salad of tangy tasting fruit.
A fruit salad recipe in winter though? Just doesn’t seem quite right. So I was thinking making some sort of cake. And maybe having the whipped yoghurt cream as a topping. So have the fruit baked in the cake and then fresh on top. Half-baked cake maybe?
I had a few different ideas about the cake. But I was sure the fruit I was going to use would be figs, raspberries and blueberries.
Could I find fresh figs? Anywhere? No.
It’s been that kind of month.
Anyway unsure of what I was going to do exactly I just bought a whole bunch of fruit. Leaving me to think the fruit salad was meant to be.
But it’s cold out there.
And this is a cold cake. But damnit it’s not a salad. It’s a fruit salad cake. And it’s very tasty.
Ingredients
- 8 ginger cookies (I used Lidl's Just Free Ginger Cookies - they're gluten-free)
- 150g pecan nuts
- 55g butter
- stem ginger in syrup
- bunch of fresh mint, leaves of 4 stem 5 stems, chopped as thinly as possible
- teaspoon vanilla bean paste
- 229 ml double cream
- 5 tablespoons whole natural yoghurt
- 1 mango, chopped
- passion fruit, seeds
- 150g raspberries
- 2 red kiwis
- 1/2 pomegranate, seeds
- 150g blueberries
- 1/2 small sweet melon, flesh diced
Instructions
- Whip the double cream in a large bowl until it has just thickened. Whip in 4 tablespoons of the yoghurt. Add in 2 tablespoons of ginger syrup and two grated lumps of the stem ginger. Add in the mint and the vanilla bean paste. Stir in well. Taste. If it isn't sharp enough whip in another tablespoon of the yoghurt. If it's not sweet enough you could add some more ginger syrup, but remember the base and fruit will be quite sweet already. Cover the bowl with cling film and place in the fridge.
- Turn the oven on to 180 C. Add the pecans and biscuits into a mixer and mix till they are a crumby consistency. Melt the butter and stir this into the mix until it's well combined. Taste. I added in a little cinnamon at this point. Pat the mixture into a 20cm tin and bake it for 10 - 15 minutes. Take out and allow to cool completely.
- Once the base is cooled completely, spread the yoghurt-cream mix over the base. Then top with the fruit. Grate over some more stem ginger and spoon a little of the syrup over the fruit.
- Leave in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving.
