Welcome Back Cake

My parents had been away for a few months on their annual migration to a warmer climate.

To welcome them back I wanted to make them something special …

(this was also the first cake I was going to make/eat in three weeks as I am trying to lead a healthier lifestyle; unfortunately 5 portions of cake and chocolate a day wasn’t a good idea and that explains why I haven’t blogged for a month!)

My Rose and Pistachio Cupcakes are a firm family favourite, so I knew a big cake version would be a hit, and after trying ‘Raspberry and Pistachio Slices’ from Mason Blanc I knew raspberries would compliment this cake perfectly.

For the cake I decided on a genoise sponge, as it was so easy to slice into layers last time, and I still haven’t found my cake slicer/layerer thingy.

Ingredients:

Cake:
100g unsalted butter
100g pistachios
300g golden caster sugar
6 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
6 large eggs, at room temperature
2 tbsp cornflour
175g plain flour

Soaking syrup:
2 punnets of raspberries (150g each)
Juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons icing sugar

Icing
600ml double cream
2 tablespoons icing sugar sieved
2 tablespoons rose water (or to taste)
Pink/red food colouring (I used Wiltons gel colours in ‘rose’)

1) Place the butter and milk into a saucepan and heat until the butter has melted. Turn of the heat, and leave aside.

2)Grind the pistachios into a fine powder using a coffee grinder

3)Crack the eggs into a bowl and add the sugar, whisk for 10-15mins until the mixture has thickened and leaves a trail when the whisk is pulled out. As the cake doesn't have any raising agents this is important to give the sponge a bounce and make it rise nicely

4)Mix together the dry ingredients and seive into the egg/sugar mix. Gently fold in. 5)Pour the melted butter/milk mixture at the side of the bowl, again stir in gently til fully combined

6)Divide the mixture between two cake tins (or use one deeper and adjust cooking time). Bake at 170C for 20-25mins (or until a skewer comes out clean) 7)Once ready, remove from cake tin and leave to cool on wire rack

8)While the cakes were cooling I made a raspberry sauce to soak the cakes with.  This was made by mashing and seiving 2 punnets (150g each, I actually only used about 1.5 and ate the rest 😋).  The juice was heated with the juice of 1/2 a lemon and 2tablespoons of icing sugar.

Slice the cakes in half to get 4 layers

Brush each layer with the raspberry sauce

9) For the icing :Empty the cream with the icing sugar and whisk until at soft peaks, add the rose water to taste (I used two tablespoons, but add in small quantities until you get the level of rosiness you want) and the food colouring. Whisk a little bit more. Decorate cake as desired.

I wanted to do a naked cake with pretty edges, so piped the cream around the edges of each layer and just spread it in the middle and sprinkled some pistachios on top.

For the top of the cake I just spread the cream across and dotted some leftover raspberries on top, with a final sprinkling of pistachios

Ta-dah!

Mmmm... Delicious