Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s cake is far from the traditional fruitcake served up in the past.
Elderflower cordial has been flying off the shelves at Auckland grocers after the flavour featured in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding cake.
Around 200 Amalfi lemons were used to make the three-part layer cake, as well as 10 bottles of Sandringham Elderflower Cordial, made with elderflower from Queen Elizabeth's estate in Norfolk.
The only large-scale commercial business producing elderflower cordial in New Zealand is Aroha Drinks, based in Canterbury.
Grocery manager at Farro Epsom Tim Bird said Aroha elderflower cordial sold out at every Farro store in Auckland last weekend.
"We had quite a bit of stock, but we didn't anticipate that we would sell that much so unfortunately we ran out the day before. We should have ordered more and done a display and everything," Bird said.
"We had heaps of people come in and tell us that they were making the same cake as [Meghan and Harry] were having at the wedding," Bird said.
"There were so many people desperate to get the elderflower cordial, it was amazing. It's usually a good seller anyway and quite a popular flavour but it really took off with the royal wedding," he said.
Owner of Aroha Drinks Mark Dillon was thrilled to hear the flavour was taking off.
Mark Dillon, owner of Aroha Drinks, picking elderflowers. Photo / Supplied
"I had a few people mention that it was an elderflower cake that they had at the wedding but didn't really think anything of it. It's cool that people are getting into it though," he said.
Dillon started Aroha Drinks back in 2007, at a time when very few people knew about elderflower.
"It was mainly used by rural folk, farmy housewife types, as it grows wild," Dillon said.
"I picked up on it while I was travelling around Europe and thought it would be a great product for New Zealand and when I got back my mum was making it and it was growing everywhere on our farm," he said.
"So I put two and two together and thought, 'If they like it over there they will probably like it here at some point too'."
He set about introducing the elderflower cordial into metropolitan areas, cafes and boutique grocers and it started to become a hit with Kiwis.
Another business revelling in the popularity of the elderflower is The Caker in Auckland.
The Caker's Penny Robinson said Sky TV had placed a large order of cakes in the royal wedding flavour and a number of people had inquired about getting the same one made.
"There was probably upwards of 15 to 20 people who have emailed us over a couple of weeks asking if we can make them a lemon and elderflower cake," Robinson said.
While the cake isn't on the menu at The Caker, a special recipe was formulated to satisfy the orders.
"We have a really similar lemon cake so we found the highest percentage elderflower syrup that we could and sprinkled that into the icing and the cake itself," Robinson said.
