Cardamom Cake with White Chocolate and Rose Buttercream
Cardamom Cake with White Chocolate and Rose Buttercream is a fun and floral celebration cake.
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Floral bakes
What started off as one of my favourite cakes as a student has now become my go to when I want to make a fun, girly cake for any celebration. I first came across the cardamom, white chocolate and rose combination as a student in Nottingham. It was an exciting, exotic combination that really caught my interest.
I studied at Nottingham University between 2009 and 2012 and those three years were unsurprisingly incredibly important to me – not least because they gave me the degree and experience I needed to get my job as a corporate lawyer in London. As with most people when they go off to University it was my first taste of real freedom. It was also when I decided to carve out a little space of the internet to call my own and started my first blog Kitchen Goddess (in training!) which first featured this recipe.
While living in Nottingham I found a few places to call my own too. Lee Rosy’s was one of my favourite places to head to for a bit of calm space when my crazy house was getting too much but it was also a lovely space to share with friends and family who came to stay.
Lee Rosy’s always had a fantastic selection of home-made cakes. It was the cardamom cake with white chocolate and rose buttercream which was the inspiration for this recipe. Looking back I can see now that it was made with wholemeal flour and rather than being topped with buttercream, the icing was more of a white chocolate and rose ganache. It was also decorated in a much more rustic fashion rather than covered in ombre icing with candied rose petals scattered on top. (Find the tutorial to make the candied rose petals here.)
What I loved so much about that cake when I had that first forkful , was how the fragrant cardamom had this warming effect with each mouthful. I hadn’t tried spice in cake before and I loved trying something so exotic and unique. The thin layer of white chocolate, buttercream icing was quite simply the icing on the cake, the sweetness lifting the cake to a rich creamy finish. It was a little layer of happiness but not over the top.
Having baked this cake plenty of times now, I’ve really pimped it out into more of a celebration cake. It’s a celebration of my time at university, a celebration of growing up and finding my place in the world. We’ve come a long way from the back streets of Nottingham!
The recipe
Cardamom Cake with Rose and White Chocolate Buttercream
Ingredients
For the cake
- 10 cardamom pods
- 250 g caster sugar
- 250 g butter
- 5 eggs
- 250 g self raising flour
- 1 pinch salt
- pink food colouring
For the decoration
- 2 tsp rose water
- 150 g butter
- 400 g icing sugar
- 300 g white chocolate melted
- pink food colouring
- Candied rose petals
Instructions
- For the cake
- Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4.
- Line three 8 inch, lose bottomed cake tins with grease proof paper and place to one side.
- Before you begin to make the cake you have to embark on the tricky task of removing the seeds from the pods. You can either do this by squashing the cardamom pod with the flat side of a large knife, or alternatively cut the pods open and scoop out the seeds. You then need to grind the seeds into a fine powder.
- Next cream together the butter and the sugar. Make sure you do this thoroughly and wait for the mixture to turn a much paler, creamier yellow.
- Whisk the eggs up and slowly add them to the butter and sugar mix, only a little bit at a time. Whisking the mixture together thoroughly in between each addition. If you add too much too quickly the mixture may curdle but don’t panic! Keep whisking, if that doesn’t help a pinch of flour should do the trick!
- Next sift the flour, salt and the cardamom powder into your bowl! Fold the mixture until thoroughly combined.
- Divide the cake mix into three bowls. Tint one bowl dark pink using 3 or 4 drops of the food dye and another bowl light pink with just one drop of food dye. Leave the remaining cake batter pale yellow.
- Spoon the batter into the three separate tins and place in the centre of your oven for 25 minutes.
- Once they are golden, springy to the touch and a skewer comes away clean, pop on a cooling rack to cool.
- For the icing
- Whisk the butter until it is soft, add the rose essence, and then start adding the icing sugar.
- When you have a soft buttercream formed melt your white chocolate allow to cool until warm then pour into the butter cream and whisk!
- Again, split the icing into three bowls, tinting one bowl dark pink, one light pink and leaving the remaining icing pale yellow.
- Place the cake onto a cake board and sandwich all three layers together with 1/3 of the pale yellow icing reserving some for the top of the cake. Place the dark pink icing into an icing bag and pipe around the bottom half of the cake.
- Place the light pink icing into an icing bag and pipe around the top half of the cake leaving roughly 1 cm of the sides clear.
- Finally, spoon the pale yellow icing on to the top of the cake and gently encourage down the sides to meet the light pink icing.
- Next, taking a small spatula and starting at the bottom of the cake, smooth the icing and work upward in a spiral motion so that the dark pink fades to light pink and the light pink fade to pale yellow.
- As you reach the top of the cake, create a swirl pattern moving towards the centre of the cake.
- Finish by topping with a handful of candied rose petals.
Notes
Nutrition
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Enjoy!
I went to Lee Rosy's yesterday and had a slice of this delicious cake and I wasn't brave enough to go ask for the recipe either. Instead I came home and Googled it. Lovely to find your blog as I myself am a law student in the Uni of Nottingham [LLM] trying to get through my exam period with baking. lol Thanks a lot for the recipe. Will try it very soon. 😉
What a coincidence! You've probably passed me in the Law School corridors 😛 definitely give it a go! It's not a copycat, but I think it's a half decent interpretation 🙂
White chocolate and cardamom are incredible flavour partners – I can imagine this cake tastes wonderful and the photos are so pretty!!
Thanks Ceri. I’ve only ever tried it in cake form but imagine it could work well in other desserts too!
Oh my goodness, those flavours! This sounds stunning and looks just gorgeous!
Thanks Kate, with cake decorating I often find I have these wonderful visions which I’m not actually quite skilled enough to execute so I was pretty pleased with this one!
How pretty! I love the idea of using edible flowers in baking xx
What an absolutely beautiful cake! I bloomin’ love a bit of ombre and those rose petals? Oh so pretty! I also head off for cake when life is a bit crazy… 🙂 Thanks so much for linking with #CakeClub.
Hi Sarah, I’m glad you like it 🙂 I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of topping it with rose petals sooner but this was the first time I did. It went down such a storm I will definitely be doing it again.