Apple and blackberry traybake with sweet geranium sugar

You’ll find yourself reaching for this recipe over and over again. Here I use apple and blackberries with sweet geranium, but I also love it with green gooseberries and elderflower, or plums. I enjoy arranging the blackberries and apples in neat lines, but if you are super busy just sprinkle them over the top of the sponge base.

Lemon geranium plants are available from the majority of garden centres and can be used in a myriad of ways – lemonades, compotes, sorbets, granitas, crystallising – it’s really worth looking out for and you’ll wonder how you lived without it.

You can substitute one teaspoon finely grated organic lemon zest for the lemon geranium leaves and mix with the 50g granulated sugar as stated in recipe and sprinkle over the tray bake as directed in final paragraph.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Cesius/gas mark 3. Line the base of a 33 x 23 x 5cm cake tin, or a 25.5cm sauté pan or cast-iron frying pan with parchment paper, allowing it to hang over the sides. Arrange 6-8 sweet geranium leaves over the base – these give the sponge a haunting lemony flavour.

To make the sponge base, combine the butter, sugar and flour in the bowl of a food processor. Whizz for a second or two, then add the eggs and stop as soon as the mixture comes together. Spoon the mixture over the base of the tin as evenly as possible (over the sweet geranium leaves).

Peel the apples. Cut into thin slices and arrange on top of the sponge in three lines. Arrange a line of blackberries in between each row. Sprinkle 25g of the caster sugar over the top and bake for about 50 minutes.

Meanwhile, whizz 2-4 sweet geranium leaves with the remaining 50g caster sugar in a food processor. Spread over a baking tray and set aside at room temperature to dry out.

Once it is fully cooked, the centre of the cake should be firm to the touch and the edges slightly shrunk from the sides of the tin. Serve in the tin, sprinkled with the sweet geranium sugar. Alternatively, leave to rest in the tin for 4-5 minutes before turning out. Serve with crème fraîche or softly whipped cream.