I've got more gooseberries on my bushes than I know what to do with. So far we've picked at least 12lbs of them. Last week I made gooseberry and elderflower jam. Tonight I've made a cake with some of them. First course was:

Broccoli and cheese sauce for pasta

(adapted from Antonio

Carluccio)

2 heads broccoli chopped

2 cloves garlic

4 slices bacon

300mls milk

good handful grated`parmesan

First cook the broccoli in salted water until tender. Cook the bacon slices in a little olive oil . Remove from the pan, and cook 2 cloves chopped garlic in the same oil until just brown. Put the cooked broccoli in the pan, add the milk and chopped bacon and simmer while the pasta is cooking. Carluccio said orrechiette, but I just had penne. When the pasta is cooked mix it into the broccoli mixture and stir in the parmesan.

This tasted`surprisingly good, and was given a nice bite by the garlic.

Gooseberry and almond cake

125g chilled butter,chopped

250g plain flour

10mls baking powder

125g greek yogurt

125g ground almonds

125g light muscovado sugar

350g gooseberries

85g castor sugar

flaked almonds

Heat oven to 180C. Line a 27x18cm baking tin with baking parchment.

Put the flour, baking powder, ground almonds and sugar into a bowl. Rub in the butter to make crumbs, then stir in the yogurt. This makes a moist dough. Form the dough into a sausage. Use two thirds to line the base and sides of the tin. I just pressed it out with my fingers. Put the gooseberries on the dough. Sprinkle with the sugar. Roll out the remaining dough, drape over the gooseberries, and seal the edges. In practice the dough broke into pieces. I just patched them together, leaving a few berries showing through. Sprinkle with flaked almonds. put in the oven for about 45 minutes.

This recipe was adapted from a streusel recipe on the BBC Good Food site. Instead of using 250g butter, I used half butter and half yogurt, in a bid to lower the fat content. The result was very good: a tender dough with slightly biscuity edges; the gooseberry juices nicely soaked up by the ground almonds.