Butterfly Blackberry Cakes

My mum picked us some blackberries from the back of her garden.  I already picked quite a few a couple of weeks ago.  They are really early, the other places we pick them are not so ripe yet, but we keep checking!  Although we've kind of had 'summer holidays' we have done a bit of informal butterfly work following on from the Big Butterfly Count and I picked up a butterfly cake mould yesterday so today we used it and the blackberries.

We just added the blackberries to an ordinary sponge cake recipe and then we did one cake in the mould and made fairy cakes with the rest.  We made the filling with whipped cream, about a tablespoon or so of pureed and sieved blackberries and a tablespoon of sugar.  This is an old whisk from my childhood.  The boys really like using it so I'm glad I rescued it!

I always leave some cakes without icing/cream as James and Charlie are much more likely to eat them plain - we let them choose.  Charlie ate 4 cakes!! They were very nice!