Let Them Eat Cake - A Marie Antoinette Inspired Layer Cake

Let them eat cake, is a phrase we all associate with Marie Antoinette, despite the fact that she probably never actually said it.

The phrase and the opulence that can also be associated with the French Royal family which Marie Antoinette married into, has inspired many an artist, film maker and cake decorator over the years. 

This history and opulence was in part the inspiration for this cake, which I recently developed for The Healthy Baker. The brief was that the cake must have pink icing, and use flowers to decorate. 

While maybe not as opulent as some ‘let them eat cake’ inspired cakes, I think this cake presents well but is also quite easy to achieve. 

You will see that the buttercream icing is not perfectly smooth, this is not only as I felt it unnecessary as the whole cake will be covered with decoration, but it also avoided the cake having too thick a layer of buttercream. Since the cake is filled with passionfruit curd, that is where the cake is getting a lot of its flavour, and too much buttercream may detract from that. 

Too make the cake even easier I used bought passionfruit curd, and in terms of the decoration I can assure you that very little skill is involved when it comes to placing the flowers (both fresh and freeze dried) all over the cake! I also used some edible gold leaf which was easy to buy online from Woolworths.

You can find the recipe via The Healthy Baker’s website - it would make a great celebration cake or just a fun weekend baking project!

Recipe development projects like this one, are my favourite part of my job. Creating a recipe with businesses products means I get to think of new ideas, be creative and also try new things. I also get to eat the cake after, which is a pretty good job perk if you ask me!

If you have a product you’d love me to create some recipes with, just contact me and we can chat about what your business needs. Recipes for your website or blog are great ways to show your customers how to use your products, and the images are great for social media and other marketing content too!

Click here to find out a little bit more about working with me.

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

As you may have noticed from the number of times I have posted a recipe for Pavlova on this blog, I love Pavlova! It was my favourite thing my Grandma made, and I seem to be unable to stop coming up with new adaptations to it. 

After making a Duck Egg Sponge a little while ago, I knew that next time I was able to find duck eggs I would try and bake something different. So when I finally found them again, I decided to make a duck egg Pavlova! A quick Google told me that duck eggs make great Pavlovas so I was keen to try it out. The flavours for this Pavlova are inspired by the honeyed cream from the Duck Egg Sponge I made. Adding honey to whipped cream is just about the most simple thing to do, but it tastes so good! I also love fresh honeycomb, so I couldn’t resist using some to decorate the Pavlova. 

I buy my honeycomb from a farm stand in the north western suburbs of Sydney, and it is super fresh, and not too expensive ($15 for 500g). Fresh honeycomb is the purest form of honey you can eat as it has not gone through any filtering processes. The comb of the honey is fine to eat, and actually contains many beneficial properties. The honey this particular farm stand sells is amazing as well, and is also raw so all the good things are left in the honey rather than being striped out. 

I have found these types of honey’s have a more complex and interesting flavour than the honey sold at supermarkets, and buying it straight from the producer means you can buy it in larger quantities and at a better price than honey’s sold at gourmet food stores. Depending on where you live, you might even be able to find fresh duck eggs at farm stands or farmers markets, its always worth keeping an eye out!

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb 

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Ingredients: 

6 duck egg whites

375g caster sugar

1.5 tsp white vinegar 

1.5 tsp vanilla bean paste 

30g cornflour 

To decorate: 

300ml pouring cream

90ml honey

fresh honeycomb

dried edible lavender

edible flowers, to decorate, optional

Method: 

Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Line a large baking tray with baking paper.

Separate the duck eggs adding the whites to the bowl of a stand mixer. Duck egg shells are tougher than chicken eggs, and take a little more effort to crack, and I have found in the process the shells won’t crack ‘cleanly’. I suggest cracking each over a glass then separating the yolk and the whites over another glass or small bowl so you keep as many shell fragments contained and away from the pavlova mixture as possible! 

Beat the egg whites for 5-6 minutes, whilst gradually adding the sugar. Add the vinegar and vanilla and beat until the mixture is stiff, glossy and holds its peak (for an example of what this looks like see this video on my Facebook page).

Sift cornflour over the mixture, and gently fold to combine. 

Use a little of the mixture to help keep the baking paper in place. Spread the mixture into a rectangle, approximately 20 x 35 cm (this will depend on the size of your tray). If you want a pavlova with a more marshmallowy centre, make the rectangle smaller than 20 x 35 cm, so it will be thicker rather than wide. Try to keep the edges a little higher than the middle so any filling can sit comfortably later. 

Turn the oven down to 125 degrees Celsius, and cook undisturbed for 1.5 hours. 

After 1.5 hours, turn the oven off and leave the pavlova to cool completely in the oven (or overnight). 

Just before you are ready to serve your pavlova, whip the cream until it has thickened and is forming soft peaks. Add the honey and whisk until combined. Spread the cream over the centre of the pavlova. Decorate with a small sprinkling of dried edible lavender, small chunks of fresh honeycomb and some edible flowers. 

Note: If you are preparing the pavlova in advance of serving it, or know you will have left overs, I suggest serving the honeycomb on the side as the honey from the honeycomb will start to drip away when stored in the fridge.

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Duck Egg Pavlova with Fresh Honeycomb

Blood Orange Cupcakes

Before blood orange season is officially over, I really wanted to share this simple cupcake recipe with you. The basic recipe is my staple cupcake/cake recipe I bake over and over again, and thus adapt over and over again. 

I have had a bit of a ‘thing’ for blood oranges this season. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have noticed! And luckily, this season seems to have been particularly plentiful. To me they are much nicer than a regular orange and I always feel some level of excitement when cutting one open - how red/purple will it be?! I have bought many whilst perusing the local green grocers on my lunch break, and carried them home on the train with either grand plans to bake something that weekend or just to juice them and freeze it for something later on. 

This recipe can suit either plan, use whilst the oranges are fresh, or defrost the juice later on and make when blood oranges have long gone from the markets. If making with fresh oranges, use the zest in the cake and the juice for the icing as the below recipe suggests. If you only have the juice, use that for the icing and add the zest of a regular orange to the cake batter, or substitute for one teaspoon of vanilla extract or paste. The recipe could of course be used for a whole cake rather than cupcakes, I particularly liked making it as a simple ring cake (picture below) - just remember the cooking time will be a little longer. 

Another option - Blood Orange Ring Cake 

Blood Orange Cupcakes

Ingredients: 

125g canola based margarine (or other flavourless margarine)

165g golden caster sugar (or caster sugar)

finely grated zest of one small/medium blood orange

2 eggs 

250g self-raising flour

105ml milk (preferably skimmed)

Ingredients for the Icing: 

1 1/2 cups icing sugar, plus extra

juice of 1/2 - 1 blood orange 

edible flowers for decoration, optional 

Method: 

Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and line a 12 hole cupcake tray with cupcake cases. 

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the margarine, sugar and blood orange zest 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 combined.

Evenly divide the mixture amongst the cupcake cases, the mixture should fill each case so they are about 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when touched lightly and a skewer comes out clean. The cakes will be lightly golden when they are done. 

Remove the cupcakes from the tray and cool on a wire rack. 

Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add one tablespoon of blood orange juice, and stir. Continue to add small amounts of the juice and stir well, until the icing is a nice smooth consistency. If you find the icing becomes too runny, add little bits of sifted icing sugar until you have created the right consistency (if the icing is too runny it will just run off the cupcakes and make a mess, it needs to have a slight spreadable consistency so you end up with most of the icing on top of the cakes, rather than all down the sides).  Spread icing over each cupcake, don’t worry if it runs downs the sides a little. Top with edible flowers immediately, if using. Allow the icing to set a little before serving. 

Cakes that have been decorated with edible flowers are best eaten the day of making. If there are any leftovers store in the fridge, as the decoration will not store well at room temperature. Otherwise, storing in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days will be fine.

Raspberry and Vanilla Bundt Cake with Rose Syrup

After finally finishing watching Nigella Lawson’s new series, ‘Simply Nigella’, I was itching to make a bundt cake. Not just any bundt cake though, one that uses the really cool tin that Nigella uses for her trio of bundt cakes in her Christmas episode of ‘Simply Nigella’. I had seen this bundt tin around (sold exclusively at Williams Sonoma I think), and at $50 I initially thought maybe it was a little pricey to buy just because it looked cool. In the back of my mind however, I knew it was only a matter of time until I caved and purchased it. I just can’t help it when it comes to two things: Cake tins and cookbooks. I now have rather a few of both! 

Then, I saw Williams Sonoma had a sale on their baking ware. Well, that was it. I caved and bought one of the bundt tins, plus a couple of mini bundt tin pans. Funnily enough, I had this conversation with one of my friends who also likes to bake, and she had also just caved and bought the bundt tin as well! This all culminated around the time Nigella was in Australia on her book tour, and both of us had gone to hear her speak at the Dymocks Literary Lunch (back in January this year). 

I feel may we have been swept up in ‘Nigella fever’ so to speak, and thus Williams Sonoma did well out of both of us! I do doubt that either of us regret our inability to maintain our will power and not buy the cake tin, our cakes just look so pretty once they are baked in it!

For this particular bundt cake, I chose to adapt a recipe from Nigella’s book ‘Nigella Christmas’. The cake is flavoured only with vanilla and baked in a tin that, once dusted with icing sugar, looks like a cluster of snow capped mountains. I have added raspberries to my bundt, and made a rose syrup to drizzle over. I know you are probably thinking, ‘again with the rose?!’, but when you have been searching for edible flowers for as long as I have, once you find them, you buy them at every opportunity and adjust your baking plans accordingly! The cake would however, still be wonderful without the syrup if you didn’t feel like making it. 

Raspberry & Vanilla Bundt Cake with Rose Syrup

Ingredients for the Bundt Cake: 

225g unsalted butter, softened

300g caster sugar

6 eggs

350g plain flour 

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

250ml plain fat-free yoghurt (I used Greek yoghurt)

3 tsp vanilla bean paste

200g raspberries (or loganberries), roughly chopped

icing sugar, for dusting

canola oil spray, for greasing

Ingredients for the Rose Syrup:

30g fresh rose petals 

210g caster sugar 

715ml water 

Method: 

Start by making the rose syrup. Ensure the rose petals have been gently rinsed and dried. Combine the water and caster sugar in a medium pan over medium-high heat. Bring to the boil then allow to simmer for a few minutes until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and allow to cool until it is just warm. 

Whilst the syrup is cooling, pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease a 2.5l capacity bundt tin with the canola oil spray, ensuring you get into the creases and corners. Place a large baking tray into the oven while it is preheating.

Once the syrup has cooled until it is just warm, add the rose petals. Try to submerge them as much as possible into the syrup. Leave to infuse. 

In a large bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until they become light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time along with a tablespoon of flour, mixing well between each addition. 

Once the eggs are well combined, add in the remaining flour, the bicarb soda, vanilla and yoghurt. Fold in all the ingredients until just combined. Add the raspberries and gently fold into the batter.

Evenly pour the batter into the prepared bundt tin, smoothing the top and gently tapping the tin onto a bench to ensure the batter has reached all the crevices of the tin. Place the bundt tin in the oven, sitting on top of the pre-heated baking tray. Bake for at least 45 minutes. Check the centre of the cake with a skewer to ensure the cake is baked through, leaving it in the oven for another 10-15 minutes if it is yet to cook through properly. Once the skewer comes out clean, the cake is ready. 

Remove the cake from the oven, and allow to sit on a wire rack for about 15 minutes. Then carefully invert the cake onto a cooling rack to remove from the tin.

Allow the cake to cool completely before serving. Dust with icing sugar, and serve each slice with a drizzle of the Rose Syrup (and maybe some cream or ice cream!). 

A note on the Rose Syrup: With the petals left in the rose syrup, it will only last a couple of days maximum. However, if you strain the syrup and remove the petals it will last at least a week in the fridge. To enhance the rose flavour once the petals have been removed, add a teaspoon of rosewater and mix.

References: ‘Nigella Christmas’ by Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus, 2008), p.198; or via Nigella’s website; Local is Lovely by Sophie Hansen. 

For more recipes showcasing the best of rose, check out my ebook Baking with Rose by clicking on the link below!

Fortnum & Mason’s Rose Biscuits Revisited + How to Make Crystallised Rose Petals

It has been about two years since I was last at Fortnum & Mason, and almost the same amount of time since I first attempted making these biscuits. In a previous post, which can be found here, I shared my version of Fortnum & Mason’s rose biscuits. And over the past couple of years, I have noticed it has consistently been a popular post on the blog - which I love, as I feel it means there are others out there who either like me have an obsession with using rose in baking, or, are just as in love with Fortnum & Mason’s biscuits as I am. 

The original recipe for Fortnum & Mason’s rose scented biscuits requires some crystallised (or sugared) rose petals, of which I have never been able to find in Australia. I still dream of the packets of crystallised rose and violet petals I saw in the shop G. Detou in Paris, and still kick myself for not buying them. Since I could never find any crystallised rose petals, and fresh edible rose petals still eluded me then, my version of Fortnum & Mason’s rose scented biscuits omitted the rose petals, but included a rose icing to enhance the flavour. While I have always been happy with my adaptation, I still kept the original recipe in mind, just in case I was ever able to make it properly. 

More recently, I posted a recipe for a cake which used edible flowers, including rose petals to decorate the cake. I mentioned in that post how exciting it finally was to find edible flowers, and the recipe in this post is another reason why. I was able to crystallise the rose petals myself, then add them to the biscuit mixture as per the original Fortnum & Mason recipe. I am so very glad I was finally able to make these biscuits. They taste exactly like the ones Fortnum & Mason sell packaged in the pretty pink cylindrical tins. 

How to Crystallise Rose Petals

If you wish to make the biscuit recipe below, I would suggest making the crystallised rose petals first, a few hours in advance to give them time to dry out before making the biscuits. I did not find the rose petals, once crystallised, had a very long shelf life, so I would not advise making them days in advance.

Ingredients: 

Fresh unsprayed rose petals, gently rinsed and dried

1 egg white

50g sugar (approx.) 

Method: 

Prepare two or three large baking trays by lining them with baking paper. 

Gently whisk the egg white with a fork until lightly frothy. 

Working slowly and doing each rose petal individually, use a small soft bristled (new or kitchen purpose) paint brush, and brush a small amount of the egg white over both sides of the rose petal. Ensure every part of the petal is covered in egg white. It is easiest to hold the rose petal at the narrower end, where it is a little white in colour. 

Then, gently toss the petal in some of the sugar, again ensuring the whole petal has been coated in the sugar. Dust of any excess sugar, and place on one of the prepared trays. 

Continue doing the same for each rose petal. Leave the sugared rose petals to dry on the prepared trays for at least a couple of hours.

In humid conditions the petals may take longer to crystallise, and they can be dried out in the oven at an extremely low temperature, about 20 degrees Celsius. I tried both methods of drying and found they dried better when left out for a couple of hours or so. 

Once the petals have dried they will be crunchy and ready to use in the recipe below or as a garnish for cakes and desserts. 

Homemade crystallised rose petals last a maximum of a couple of days after crystallising, when they are left out so they remain dry. I found keeping them in an airtight container wasn’t the best option for storing them. 

Homemade Crystallised Rose Petals

Some examples of recipes where crystallised rose petals would make a great garnish can be found in the links below: 

Raspberry & Rose Cupcakes

Pavlova

Rose Sponge Cake

Summer Celebration Cake

Raspberry & Almond Layer Cake

Rose Pound Cake

Rose & Pistachio Cake

Raspberry & Rose Celebration Cake

Fortnum & Mason’s Rose Scented Biscuits

Ingredients: 

100g unsalted butter, softened

50g golden caster sugar or caster sugar 

1 tbsp rosewater

100g plain flour

50g almond meal

15 g/10 medium/large (whole) crystallised rose petals, roughly chopped

Method: 

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and line a baking tray with baking paper. 

In a large bowl, cream butter, sugar and rosewater until all combined. Sift in the flour, add the almond meal and crystallised rose petals and mix until combined. 

Using a teaspoon, take spoonfuls of the mixture and roll into balls and place on the baking trays. Flatten the balls a little so they form fat round discs. 

Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until slightly golden. If you are unsure if they are cooked, use a palette knife to gently lift a biscuit - if it is evenly golden on the base of the biscuit, it is cooked. Cool biscuits on the trays or on a wire rack. 

This recipe only makes about 20 biscuits, but after all the fuss of crystallising your own rose petals, I suggest doubling the quantities and making more! The cooked biscuits last about one week.

Reference: ‘Tea at Fortnum and Mason’ (Ebury Press, 2010), p.61.

For more recipes showcasing the best of rose, check out my eBook Baking with Rose by clicking the link below!

Simple Summer Celebration Cake & Two Years of Blogging

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.