For The Love of Bergamot
What do with Bergamots and More Citrusy Recipes - Friday Food Chat with Kath
Last week I shared an easy Bergamot Loaf cake recipe with you.
Bergamots are lovely in cake, and easy oil based cakes like that one make baking with bergamots, or any other citrus, easy, quick and extremely flavoursome.
Bergamots can be used in a variety of baking settings, once you try one, you won’t want to stop! And if you have any other citrus you want to bake with, the below recipes will be excellent too.
Bergamia, based in Victoria, sent me some of their freshly harvested bergamot last week (pictured above) - thank you! So I will be making my way through this list as well, enjoying all the bergamot goodness as long as I can! Then I’ll go back to using lemons and other citrus, since these recipes are so good! Message Bergamia on Instagram if you’re keen to get your hands on some bergamot goodness.
On to the recipes!
Bergamot Melting Moments - one of my favourite ways to use bergamot in baking, but any citrus works well in these. Melting Moments are a relatively simple sandwich biscuit, but really work so well when flavoured with citrus.
Bergamot Shortbread - Another relatively simple biscuit recipe, but again works so well with bergamot (and any other citrus). You will really get a hit a flavour with these, and much more than any Earl Grey flavoured shortbread you could make with the tea.
Chicken! - Bergamot goes really well with chicken, so try swapping lemon for bergamot in recipes that use lemon in roast chicken or in sauces served with chicken.
Cakes! - bergamot is so great in cakes, especially simple ones where you can use the zest in the cake and the juice in a nice glaze icing. The Bergamot Loaf Cake I shared last week is a great example of this, here’s another you can make with bergamot or any other citrus you fancy (blood orange is also especially good!).
Drinks - Bergamot can be used in place of lemon in many drinks. I’m sure cocktail makers would find lots of uses for it! For something alcohol free and especially refreshing, I make this Strawberry Bergamot and Rose Kompot (kompot is like a Ukrainian cordial).
If you have an excess of any citrus and can’t bake or cook with it all now, you can freeze the fruit whole as well as juicing them and freezing the juice in portions.
Have you ever tried bergamot? What recipes do you like using it in?
Check out more recipes over on the paid version of this newsletter featuring, A Ginger Sponge Cake, A Festive Boiled Fruit Cake and A Caramel Ginger Pudding. See the whole archive here and sign up to support my work and get it all straight to your inbox or Substack feed!
Citrus Curd
Any abundance of citrus means making citrus curd. This recipe uses yuzu, but you can swap for whatever citrus you have. This recipes comes via Catherine Phipps’ book ‘Citrus’, which I highly recommend if like me you love baking and cooking with citrus.
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