Rosewater Mini Rose Bundt Cakes

These rosewater cakes were made in a mini bundt tin but you could also make them as cupcakes with rosewater buttercream frosting. The cakes have a surprise on the inside - they are bright pink! I made them for a colleague's birthday as I knew she wouldn't want a big cake and a lot of fuss but I wanted to make something. I received the Nordicware mini rose bundt tin for Christmas and wanted to try it out as well!

I thought rosewater would be the perfect flavour to go with the rose cake tin. When I want to find a recipe using a specific ingredient I am more likely to turn to the internet than a recipe book- books are great for browsing but it can take a long time to find a specific recipe if you don't know where to look! I found this recipe on the Australian website Taste.com.au but did not include the frosting, and I used vegetable oil instead of canola oil.

You need:

1 cup vegetable oil (250ml)

1 and 1/2 cups caster sugar (330g)

2 eggs

1 cup plain yogurt (280g)

2 cups self-raising flour (300g)

2 tbsp rosewater

pink food colouring

Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the oil, sugar and eggs in a large bowl.

Gently mix in the yogurt then the flour.

I then added the pink food colouring.

Here's a close-up of the Nordicware bundt tin I got for Christmas, it's very pretty!

And here you can see the side view

I sprayed each indent in the tin with Dr. Oetker Cake Release:

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. The cakes came out of the tin perfectly thanks to the Cake Release, and you can clearly see the rose shape - I was really pleased with these.

I had enough mixture for a second batch but had run out of Cake Release so instead I used Fry-Light. I thought a spray oil would work better than greasing the tin with butter as it would get in all the nooks and crannies. I also thought that using Fry-Light would probably be no different to Cake Release, but I was very wrong! Fry-Light is obviously an oil for cooking and you can see from the picture below how dark the cakes using Fry-Light came out. They still came out of the tin easily, but they cooked for the same length of time - of course, the oven would have been hotter for the second batch, but I think using oil instead of Cake Release meant they were overdone. I'll go back to using Cake Release in future!

Despite everyone thinking the darker cakes were chocolate, they went down well at work. I sprinkled the tops with edible red glitter for a little extra pizazz. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the inside as they were bright pink from the food colouring! The rosewater taste was quite subtle but I think definitely there, and the shape of the cakes was a real talking point.

There are several blog challenges this month that this recipe is perfect for. Firstly, Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel at Dollybakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme is l'amour. (That's love, for non-French speakers!)

Secondly, I'm sharing this with Cakeyboi for Treat Petite, as the theme is Valentine's treats for your loved ones.

Four Seasons Food is focusing on "food from the heart" this month so I think these mini rose cakes fit nicely with the theme. The challenge is hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg.

Finally a new challenge, Love Cake, hosted by Jibber Jabber. Rose-shaped cakes are certainly evocative of love and passion - the theme this month is baking with passion.

Cardamom Layer Cake with Raspberry and Rose Mascarpone

I recently received a copy of a recipe book called Cooking With Flowers, which shows you how you can use all sorts of flowers from the garden in your baking. It's a lovely looking book with some very unusual recipes and I decided I wanted to make something from the book for my mum as her birthday cake. I have to admit to being a rubbish gardener though; I don't know the names of 99% of the flowers in my garden (even the ones I planted myself!) and was a bit dubious about which ones were apparently edible. Roses are one of the few flowers I know (I did say I was rubbish!) and I was particularly taken by this recipe for a cardamom cake with raspberry and rose mascarpone; the picture looked pretty as well so I decided to make it.

I've adapted the quanties slightly (eg for the icing sugar as I found I needed more), but the quantity of egg whites is correct! You need: 

1 and 2/3 cup milk

8 egg whites

3 tsp vanilla extract

2 and 1/4 cups plain flour

2 and 1/2 cups caster sugar

6 tsp baking powder

1 and 3/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp ground cardamom

1 and 1/2 cups butter

petals from 2 roses

1 cup double cream

2 cups mascarpone cheese

8 tbsp icing sugar

1 tbsp rosewater

2 cups fresh raspberries

for the candied rose petals:

1 egg white

a few tbsp of caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180C. Pour 2/3 of a cup of milk into a measuring jug and add the egg whites and vanilla.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

I couldn't find ground cardamom, only pods. I had to crush them with a pestle and mortar first:

then remove the shells and you have seeds. I did my best to crush these in a pestle and mortar but I didn't get a particularly fine powder, though it worked fine in the end. Add the cardamom to the flour mixture.

Add the remaining 1 cup of milk and mix well with an electric mixer; then add the butter and mix again.

Whisk in the egg white mixture a third at a time.

Divide the mixture into three greased and lined 8-inch cake tins and bake for about 25 mins.

 I didn't see the part of the recipe that said to cool the cakes in their pans for 15 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely; if you try to remove the cake from the tin too soon, this happens!

I learnt my lesson and the other parts of the cake were fine. It was a really moist, almost wet cake; the recipe book says you shouldn't fill it until shortly before serving. I made the cake the night before so waited until the next morning to make the filling.

I do have roses in my garden but unfortunately they are not in bloom yet and I couldn't wait as this cake was for my mum's birthday, so I bought myself a bunch of roses.

I wanted to make candied rose petals to decorate the cake with and needed to do this in advance. It's quite simple really - there are instructions at the back of the same recipe book. Separate the rose petals, whisk an egg white and brush the petals with egg white. Sprinkle them with sugar then leave to dry. I left these for two nights and found they hardened a bit but remained quite sticky. They looked good on the cake though in the end I didn't actually try eating one which was more an oversight than anything else!

To make the filling for the cake, place the remaining rose petals in a small bowl or glass with the double cream and leave to infuse overnight. When you are ready to use the cream, strain in a sieve and discard the rose petals.

Beat the cream, mascarpone, rosewater and icing sugar until thick.

Fold in the raspberries - keep a few aside for decoration

Mix again with the electric mixer to break the fruit up and turn the cream a lovely pink colour.

Spread a third of the cream on the bottom layer of the cake

Repeat with all three layers

Spread the remaining cream on top; I tried to pile it up in peaks (you could also pipe it on for a nicer effect).

Decorate the top with raspberries and the candied rose petals

Here's the finished cake - I thought it looked quite pretty and it tasted fantastic. The cake was so light and moist - I've never made a cake with 8 egg whites before - and the raspberry and rose mascarpone filling was creamy and delicious. You could make a variation on this with strawberries or perhaps replace the cardamom with another flavour like lavender - let me know if you decide to experiment!

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the baking blog challenge I host with The More Than Occasional Baker. Ros is hosting this month and the letter she has randomly chosen is R - so R is for rose and raspberry.

The theme for this month's Tea Time Treats is layer cakes so this cake also fits the bill. Tea Time Treats is hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked.

By luck this month's ingredient for the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima of Franglais Kitchen and Laura of How To Cook Good Food is raspberries, so this cake is perfect for this challenge as well.

Raspberries are in season so I am also sending this to Simple and In Season, hosted by Ren at Fabulicious Food.

Update: I am also sending this to Love Cake, hosted by Jibber Jabber UK, as the theme this month is flowers.

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!