Pistachio, Rosewater and Strawberry Mother's Day Cake

This is the cake I made my mum for Mother's Day this year.

I wanted a cake that would remind us of spring and was trying to think of something with a delicate flavour, and came across this recipe on Woman & Home for a pistachio and rosewater cake. I decided to try out some of my cake decorating tools at the same time.

Here's what you need for the cake:

150g pistachios, shelled
225g softened butter
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
juice of 1 lemon
4 tsp rose water
1 tsp baking powder
125g self-raising flour

Weigh out the pistachios

Pulse in a food processor until they turn into fine crumbs.

Cream the butter and the sugar

Add the eggs, one at a time

Add the lemon juice and rose water

 Finally fold in the baking powder and flour

Spoon the mixture into a tin. I used an oval-shaped tin I bought at Cake International last year as it was only a couple of pounds, and I hadn't used it yet. I thought it would be a bit different and might look quite nice; also I didn't want to make a massive cake. There was enough mixture from this recipe to make two layers of cake in this tin, which I cooked one at a time.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until cooked (the cake would take longer if you were cooking all the mixture in one tin, but I split it in half).

I had some leftover strawberry buttercream I wanted to use up, and I thought strawberry would work well with the rosewater flavour and hopefully also with the pistachios.

I spread some on top as well as in the middle.

I also spread a thin coating around the side of the cake.

I rolled out some white fondant and covered the cake. I happened to have an oval cake board for some reason which was the perfect size and shape for this cake.

Here's the first piece of equipment I wanted to try out - I bought this at Cake International last year. It's a simple rose cutter. I rolled out some pink flower paste.

Use the cutter to press out a flower shape and use the ball modelling tool (I don't know if it has a technical name) to rub around the edges of each petal, which makes them curve inwards.

Roll a small cone of flower paste and place in the centre of the flat petals. Then one at a time curl the petals around the central cone.

I did the same with another layer of petals

Here's the finished rose:

This is from another set of cutters I bought at Cake International. I cut out several small shapes from the same pink flower paste.

Here's another piece from the same pack, which I decided to use to make a frill to go around the cake (forgetting until later I have an actual frill cutter I bought for a cake decorating course!)

Here are the frills after I cut them out

I used edible glue to stick the frills around the side of the cake

I then added the smaller pieces around the bottom of the cake, evenly spaced

I decided my rose needed some leaves so I mixed some gooseberry colour paste with white fondant and then used a leaf plunger cutter to cut out some leaves

I placed the leaves on the cake next to the rose

I then mixed some lilac colour with white fondant and used some small flower plunger cutters to make flowers

I added them to each point where the frills met on the cake

I used another set of plunger cutters I had to make three butterflies in different sizes

I added these onto the cake opposite the rose - I don't know why this photo came out sideways!

Here's the finished cake. I thought about adding the word 'mum' as well, but wanted to make sure it didn't look too cluttered. I'm taking this down on the train today in my trusty cake carry case, I hope my mum likes it!