Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a lovely start to the new year. This is my first blog post for 2016, and I am quite excited about 2016 on the blog front. I have lots of new recipes to try and lots of ideas for my own, and I can’t wait to share them with you. The first of which, is this cake. This cake is my idea of using the best summer berries and edible flowers, and creating something very simple yet still spectacular.
And for this post, I am using this simple yet spectacular cake to celebrate two years since I started this blog. It’s quite surreal to think about how that amount of time has gone by already. I love looking back at the recipes I have done in the past, and seeing how even now, some of them are still the most popular recipes on the blog. I am very much looking forward to working on this blog into the future, and I hope you will all continue to check back here every now and then and see where my kulinary adventures have led.
The base recipe for this cake, has appeared in various forms on the blog a few times in the past two years. This is probably my favourite to date, although the passionfruit version would have to be a super close second. The idea for this particular cake came from my undying and rather obsessive need to use edible flowers. And once I (finally, oh finally!) found some, in the amazing fruit market near my work nonetheless, this cake was born. As a side note to explain how obsessive I have become on this, ever since I found that this fruit market sells edible flowers, I check back almost every lunch time to see if they have any and whether my obsessive need to use them will be fulfilled yet another time - I may require some kind of intervention at some point, just FYI, I’ll let you know when the situation becomes dire.
Obsessiveness aside, I think this cake would be fantastic for lots of occasions, but kitchen teas, afternoon teas and birthdays spring to mind first. Use whatever edible flowers you can find, otherwise a nice combination of berries will still look lovely. A regular loaf tin will work too, I found this long skinny one at Donna Hay’s pop up shop at Fox Studios in Sydney.
Simple Summer Celebration Cake
Ingredients:
125g margarine, or unsalted butter (softened)
165g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste/vanilla extract
2 eggs
250g self-raising flour
105ml milk (preferably skimmed)
100g raspberries
For the Icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1-2 tbsp rosewater
berries (raspberries, blackberries) and edible flowers (rose petals, violets, cornflowers), to decorate
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and line a loaf tin with baking paper.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the margarine, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add half the flour and half the milk and mix. Add the remaining flour and milk and mix on medium speed until well combined. Gently fold in the raspberries.
Transfer the mixture into the loaf tin, smoothing the top. Bake for 50 minutes, or until the cake springs back when touched lightly and a skewer comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for a few minutes then transfer to a cooling rack, leaving the baking paper underneath the cake (this will prevent the cake from sticking to the rack, and catch any runaway icing later).
Once the loaf has cooled completely, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add one tablespoon of rosewater, and stir. Continue to add rosewater (or water for a more subtle flavour) and stir well, until the icing is a nice smooth consistency. Drizzle the icing over the cake, allowing it to fall down the sides. Decorate with the berries and edible flowers immediately. Allow the icing to set a little before serving. If there are any leftovers store in the fridge, as the decoration will not store well at room temperature.
Original cake recipe adapted from The Australian Women’s Weekly Cakes & Slices Cookbook, p.89.
