Pistachios and rose cake

What is more romantic than celebrating an engagement on St Valentine's Day? Yesterday my friends super international friends Lily & Chris, invited their families and friends to a pub in Oxford where they organised a really nice evening for us.

Lily asked her baker friends to make a cake for the special event so the evening was sweetened up by all the treats that we made. I contributed with a new entry in my list of favourite cakes: Pistachios and rose petals cake.

The cake itself is quite sweet, but I have added quite a lot of pink glaze on top to make it more appropriate for sugary occation, but the pretty delicious also without the glaze.

ingredients

cake:

300g butter
300g caster sugar
300g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
80g pistachios
150ml milk
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Edible rose petals
1 tbsp rose water
100ml Cold water

glaze:

Edible rose petals
20g chopped pistachios
1 tsp rose water (optional)
100ml cold water
250g icing sugar
pink food colouring

instructions

1. preheat oven to 180C. Grease the inside of a 10inch bundt pan and dust with flour.

2. add 80g of the pistachios to a food processor and pulse and blend until very small crumbs remain. Place the crumbs in a bowl and mix together the flour and salt.

3. in a mixing bowl beat the butter until creamy and sugar on high speed until fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes.

4. add the eggs one at a time, beating on medium speed after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and beat for 1 more minute.

5. add the flour mixture in 3 additions and alternating it with 2 additions of milk.

6. spoon theo batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth it to an even layer.

Bake at 180C for 45-60mins or until the skewer comes out clean.

7. for the glaze, mix the icing sugar with cold water, rose water and few drops of the food colouring until smooth and drizzle on top of the cake once it is cooled.

8. chop the pistachios coarsely and sprinkle them with some rose petals over the cake.