Persian Love Cake

This persian love cake recipe is made with almond flour, rose water and ground cardamom. Honestly, it’s the most tender middle eastern cake topped with a beautifully scented vanilla rose glaze and garnished with ground pistachios and dried rose petals. I absolutely love how the flavours beautifully blend together to bake this cardamom, rose and pistachio cake up. Bundt cakes might look intimidating at first but they’re so easy to bake up and are ready in no time at all. This is the perfect cake to enjoy for a festive occasion with friends and family such as Thanksgiving or Diwali which are right around the corner. 

Ingredients you’ll need:

• Unsalted Butter:  It is very important to have your butter at room temperature. You can ensure this by lightly pressing your finger on the block of butter. It should slightly leave an imprint. I also prefer to use unsalted butter because salted butters have varying amounts of salt content in them and it is always a good idea to add it on your own and avoid your bakes from being too salty.
• Sugar: You will only need granulated sugar to add to this cake. It will help give the cake structure and hold it’s shape along with adding sweetness to it. 
• Eggs:  Use large eggs and bring them to room temperature before mixing in. Eggs strengthen the binding of your cakes and also add moisture. Having your eggs at room temperature makes it easier to incorporate them and allow them to mix thoroughly in your cake batter. A good way of doing this is by letting them sit in a bowl filled with room temperature water for around 10 minutes or until they come down to room temperature.
• Oil: You can use either vegetable oil or canola oil. This is one of the secrets resulting in this cake being ultra soft and moist. Oil reduces the gluten formation in your batter, which makes the cake more moist as compared to using butter as a fat. I do not recommend using olive oil, as it adds a strong flavor of it’s own and changes the taste.
• Lemon juice: In my experience, homemade lemon juice gives an incredibly better flavor than store bought lemon juice. I highly recommend that you put in those few extra minutes and use homemade lemon juice for a rich, preservatives-free flavor.
• Lemon zest: Citrus zests are known to add more flavor and fragrance to your bakes. You must not leave them out.
• Rose Water: I flavoured this cake with rose water to add a distinct scent and rose flavour to it which is a classic quality of a Persian love cake. Do not use more than the mentioned quantity to avoid an overpowering flavour. 
• Vanilla: You must use a high quality pure vanilla extract in your recipes. This helps to add a rich flavor to your baked goods especially when they contain chocolate. Pure vanilla extracts are typically dark brown in color. This enhances the flavour of all ingredients and you should never leave this out.
• All purpose flour: I highly recommend weighing all your ingredients using a kitchen scale for accurate recipe results. If you’re using cups, don’t scoop your cup into the flour. Spoon the flour into your cup and level it off with the back of a knife.
• Almond flour: Almond flour is the key quality of this cake and helps it stand out. It not only gives this cake a distinct flavour but also adds a more festive food touch to it. Be sure to measure your flour as your cake can turn out to be too dense otherwise. Do not substitute with almond meal they are totally different things.
• Leaveners: You will need both baking powder and baking soda to make this cake. They will help the cake batter rise and result in a fluffy cake.
• Ground Cardamom: You will need ground cardamom to add to this cake. This spice is one of the key ingredients required to make this rose flavored cake. 
• Powdered Sugar: You will need powdered of confectioners’ sugar to add to your vanilla rose glaze. It mixes in your glaze like a breeze and leaves no grainy lumps at all! 
• Milk: You will need a few tablespoons of whole milk to add to your vanilla rose glaze as required to achieve the right consistency for the glaze. 
• Pistachios: This cake is traditionally topped with a few tablespoons of ground pistachios. 
• Rose petals: To make it even more beautiful and appealing, we sprinkled this cake with rose petals.

FAQ

Tips to make the best Persian Love Cake:

• Do not over mix. Only mix until a few streaks of flour remain and then give the bowl a couple of quick turns with a large spatula to finish it off. Less is more when it comes to mixing your bundt cake batter. Over mixing can lead to a dense & dry crumb which will in turn not give you a fluffy and soft cake.
• Take time to grease your cake pan. There’s nothing worse than spending time and energy prepping, mixing, and baking your new favourite dessert only to find out that your cake is stuck to the bottom of the pan. Been there, done that and it’s not at all fun. The cake almost always tastes great but it’s obviously not as pretty. So for the best results, be sure to generously grease a non-stick bundt pan with non-stick baking spray. I like to use sprays which also have flour in them to grease bundt cakes. If your spray doesn’t, then I’d suggest doing a second round of greasing with some amount of flour. I like almost all of the bundt moulds from Nordicware USA. You also want to take care that you don’t want to get pools of oil at the bottom of your bundt pan while pouring the batter into it.
• Use room temperature eggs. Using cold eggs can cause the cake batter to coagulate and rise unevenly resulting in a tilted cake. Having your eggs at room temperature makes it easier to incorporate them and allow them to mix thoroughly in your batter. A good way of doing this is by letting them sit in a large mixing bowl filled with room temperature water for around 10 minutes or until they come down to room temperature.
• Keep an eye on the cake. You should most definitely use an oven thermometer to make sure you are baking at the correct temperature. But also, start checking the cake for doneness at the 35 minute mark and if the top is browning too quickly, cover it loosely with a piece of aluminium foil. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the top of the cake comes out with just a few crumbs remaining. Do not over bake the cake or it will be dry and crumbly in texture.
• It’s all in the flip. This is the moment of truth! Take out the rose pistachio bundt cake from the oven and set a timer for exactly 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, invert the cake onto a wire cooling rack or a cake platter by carefully placing the flat surface on top of the bundt pan. Use hot mitts to hold the sides of the bundt and quickly flip the pan and the rack or platter over in one motion. If you greased your bundt pan well, the cake should slide right out. If it doesn’t, you can wait for an additional 5 minutes and try again. However, you should never let your bundt cake sit for more than 15 minutes in the pan. Tap it a few times if it is stuck and it should slide right out. If a few bits of the cake top stuck to the inside of the pan, do your best to piece them back together. The vanilla rose glaze does wonders for hiding any mistakes and the cake will still taste amazing!
• Cool completely. It’s tempting to glaze this beautiful rose cake right away, I know. But don’t even think about it until it’s cool to the touch or the vanilla rose glaze will slide right off and not stay on top of the cake. Patience at this moment is key to getting a pretty bundt!

HOW TO GET THE BEST RESULTS FROM THIS RECIPE?

All of the recipes on the blog are thoroughly tested multiple times and carefully designed so that anyone can reproduce these delicious baked good in their own kitchen and enjoy them to the fullest. The only way to make this possible is when anyone can exactly replicate the measurements and temperatures.

• In order to standardise the way ingredients are measured, I highly recommend that you weigh them in grams. Volume measurements are nearly not as accurate and have a lot of scope for errors. To precisely be able to replicate the recipes, all you will need is a kitchen scale!
• Every oven heats up differently. Your oven might be over heating or under heating by around 50 degrees or more and you might not even know. In order to ensure that you are baking at the right temperatures, I highly recommend investing in an oven thermometer!

If you would still like to bake using volume measurements, I mentioned those below. However, I primarily test my recipes in grams and cannot promise the best results if you do so. Trust me, once you’ll start using these tools you’d never want to go back!

I hope you’ll enjoy this Persian Love Cake this Thanksgiving or Diwali and don’t forget to bookmark this recipe for the holidays. These pretty & delicious bundt cake would make the perfect delight to share with your friends & family!

Happy Festive Baking!

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