Many apologies for my almost month long absence from here. It’s funny (or scary, rather), how quickly time can pass you by. I have a few recipes up my sleeve to share, and they all revolve around cake. So in an attempt to make up for my absence I am presenting you with not one, but three cake recipes! All is forgiven now, right?!

The first cake (shared in this post) is a rose pound cake, and in a separate post I will share two amazing recipes from the book ‘Tasty Express’ by Sneh Roy. If any of you follow the Sneh’s blog ‘Cook Republic’, you’ll know that these cakes will be good!

. . .

This pound cake from Trine Hahnemann’s ‘Scandinavian Baking’ is the first thing I have made from this book. I had been wanting her book for quite a while, and once I finally got my hands on it, this rose cake jumped out at me.

The original recipe says to ground your own almond meal from whole almonds. As I have been trying to get through my (almost) life time supply of almond meal, I just used that. But feel free to use which ever is easiest for you. I also had to use rose syrup instead of rose jelly in the icing, which I think is why my icing as particularly runny! If you don’t have any rose jelly/jam, I would suggest using a rosewater based glaze icing like the one used here.

Ingredients:

250g butter softened, plus extra to grease the tin

200g almond meal

250g caster sugar

4 eggs

150g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

100ml milk

Ingredients for the Icing:

6 tbsp rose jelly

200g icing sugar

Pink food colouring

Unsprayed rose petals, optional

Method:

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 1.5 litre loaf tin with butter, and line the base with baking paper.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Sift the flour and baking powder and mix with the almond meal. Fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture with a spatula. Add the milk and mix to combine.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for one hour.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes then turn onto a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely.

Make the icing by gradually adding the icing sugar to the rose jelly until the icing is smooth. Add a little pink food colouring if you want the icing to be a brighter pink. Add a little water, and whisk until the icing is smooth, and not too runny.

Place the cake on a serving dish and spread the icing over the cake, allowing it to drip down the sides. Top with unsprayed rose petals if using.