Persian love cake

Persian love cake

I've been wanting to do something cake wise a bit more unusual for a while now... And the perfect opportunity arose this weekend! Mr B's Auntie had her birthday today, and we had a lovely Sunday lunch. And birthday cake. Yum!

This recipe is a bit changed from what I had found trawling the internet, but certainly something I'll do again. I'm tempted to say it may be one of the best cakes I've ever made (to my taste, anyway. Mr B liked it but, well, his tastes are a little more on the 'coconut and vanilla' side. Seriously, whenever I ask him which cake he would like, it's always 'coconut and vanilla'. Which is lovely, but I mainly want excuses to bake other things too! On the upside, I always know what flavour to make his birthday cakes!) Anyway, I digress....

Onto the cake. It is a cloud of gently exotic loveliness. I can;t take credit for all the recipe as it is heavily inspired by this one... http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Persian-Love-Cake-232273 but with a few alterations, mainly converting to UK stuff and fiddling about with the flavourings and changing the icing.

 Ingredients:

• 3 large eggs, separated
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) sunflower oil
• zest of 2 lemons (unwaxed or washed in warm soapy water)
• 1 cup flour made up of 2 tbsp cornflour and the rest plain flour
• 14 tbsp caster sugar (split into 2 lots of 7 tbsp)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt (flakes, if using fine salt just a pinch)
• 5 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp rosewater (I got mine from Sainsburys, made by the English Provender Co)
• The seeds from 5 cardamom pods, gently crushed in a pestle and mortar or whacked with a big bowl on a chopping board etc. However you want to bash them up!

Method

1. Grease and line 2 20cm (8") sandwich tins. Preheat the oven to 160 ish (degrees C, obvs)
2. Sift the flour, 7 tbsp sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
3. Beat the egg yolks, oil, water, rosewater, lemon zest and cardamom seeds together until combined.
4. In a standalone mixer or with a handheld electric whisk, whisk the egg whites until they're pretty stiff (soft-ish peaks) then add the sugar in three batches, whisky whisky whisking all the time, until you have a lovely fluffy cloud of meringue like fluffy cloudy stuff.
5. Mix flour and yolky stuff together to make a paste (like the talc and the lotion in Friends. Target reference, please ignore if not applicable!!)
6. Sacrifice a big spoonful of your white fluff, and beat it into the yolky floury paste to loosen it, then fold the whole lot of the yolky floury stuff into your egg white cloud CAREFULLY! Just fold it until just combined.
7. Spoon into tins, level out very gently and bake for about 30-35 mins, checking after 25 or so that they're not catching on top.

Filling / decorating - I chose to make a rose marshmallow fluff frosting, exactly as per the Devils Food recipe on this blog but with 3 tbsp of the water replaced with rosewater and omitting the vanilla. Method just as before, loads of whisking and quite a lot of whisking. Then some whisking.

I filled the centre with fluff, then added some of my favourite things...

pistachios!!! My favorite nut du jour. Although, being fickle, next week I'll probe love a cashew more. Or maybe even a macadamia. And Mrs Rock, if you're reading, I'm sorry!! You could leave them out!!

Then... Spread frosting over the whole thing. I left pistachios to just decorate the top as I didn't want knobbly bits in my marshmallow thanks very much. But you might, and I promise I won't mind if you do :)

I used freeze dried strawbs and more pistachios (with glitter, obvs) to decorate mine, but had it been summertime I'd have picked some rose petals from the garden (only if no peticides have been used so they're edible. Again, I don't like decorating cakes with anything I can;t eat, but feel free to use whatever you like on yours. Except maybe anything that weighs more than 10g as the cake is pretty delicate!!

Please enjoy... I'm now beginning a mild obsession with anything rosewater or orange blossom flavoured. You have been warned...!

JB x