Delicious Cake: I Know We Tried It Yesterday….

This cake was in the Guardian Feast magazine  (you have to have bought the magazine to get this recipe but there are some great ones online).

This cake was very, very delicious.

The only problem was my oven (electric) and a recipe that said it should be baked for 15 minutes at 180C or 350 F Gas Mark 4. I think that it needed around 30 minutes. Try it yourself, everything else was quick and accurate.

You need spinach! 70 grams of spinach leaves

2 Tbsp of milk 

225grams of butter 

225 grams of golden caster sugar (I used muscovado because I think caster is too sweet)

225 g self raising flour (I used Spelt flour because I like a rich texture)

1 tsp  baking powder (releases carbon dioxide during baking, helping the cake rise)

I tsp ground cardamon (cardamon gives a lovely citrussy, gingery, licoricy flavour, it’s a hybrid of several indian spices from Bhutan, Indonesia and Nepal)

Rose Water or Vanilla Essence

Dried rose petals to decorate (I use rose petals to make ink so I had some, if you don’t you can grate some white or dark chocolate…)

4 large eggs

Heat the oven

Boil some water, pour over the spinach to blanch. Pop spinach and the two tablespoons of milk in the blender. If you aren’t using a blender, mash the spinach and milk.

If you have or want to use a blender, add butter, sugar, flour, eggs and ground pistachio nuts and press the button….

If you don’t have or want to use a blender then:

beat the butter and sugar until the mixture is white and fine. Add the eggs and beat until all the egg is added.

Add the flour and the baking powder, folding, folding, folding (folding is using a metal spoon and curling the mixture with the spoon until all the flour is absorbed).

Add the spinach and milk, folding in

Add the pistachio and cardamon.

Grease two 24 cm (9.5 inch) tins

Pour the mixture into the tins, bake.

The icing is made with thick double cream, rose water and petals in the original recipe, I couldn’t get rose water so I used vanilla essence.

Icing

400 ml double cream

4 tbsp caster sugar

chopped pistachios (and or grated chocolate and rose petals to decorate)