Gateaux Aux Raisins Frais (Cake with Fresh Grapes) Recipe

Whilst visiting the Coachella Valley in Southern California, we were lucky to go and visit a grape ‘Ranch’ called Tudor Ranch (you can have a look at their website is interested).

I was given a pair of cutters and told that I could go and pick some grapes, I picked some red, called red flames and a couple of different type of green grapes, I also collected some raisins as if you leave some bunches of grapes on the vine, they dry out in the hot sun. It was a great experience and such an interesting day. The grapes are all very nice and sweet.

The seasonal workers here start at 6am till around 1pm as it gets too hot for them to work in the fields in the afternoon. They usually pick around 1000 boxed each in one work day, each box weight around 18 pounds. When it is the full harvest time, the ranch employs around 900 people to pick the grapes.

The grapes are boxed in the fields, each bunch is cleaned of any damaged grape etc and all this is done by hand. Once the boxes arrive at the warehouse, they are firstly put into a type of container and get fumigated so any bugs are killed. Once this has been done, they are put into the refrigerated warehouse where they are held at a set temperature until they are loaded onto a refrigerated truck.  Doreen who is one of the five siblings who own the Ranch with their mother showed us around.

They also grow Lisbon lemons and Medjool dates. The date season is from late August to September and October. We were lucky enough to get some of the dates when we visited at the end of last year. Lemons are harvested from November to April.

Here is the recipe, if you don’t fancy grapes, this would also be nice with cherries or raspberries.

Ingredients

200g flour

1 tsp of baking powder

200g sugar

4 eggs (I used large)

180g melted butter

1 tbsp vanilla

1 tbsp cognac or rum

1 large bunch of grapes

 Preheat the oven at 210C

Put the flour, sugar and baking powder into a bowl and mix well

Add the eggs and the vanilla and mix well

Add the alcohol and mix until you have a smooth batter (it’s more like a batter than a dough)

Then add the melted butter and mix until smooth

Pour into a lined rectangular baking tray – the dough should be about 2cm high

Add the washed and dried grapes

Bake for 5 minutes at 210C and then reduce the heat to 180C and bake for a further 15 minutes or until golden brown.

By: Brigitte Kershaw

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