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I am in the process of kicking around ideas for a rose cake, having seen (and summarily bought) an intriguing bag of Rose Tea from Wegman’s. So far, with much tooling around on blogs and recipe clearinghouses, I’ve been zeroing in on [http://www.kattitudes.com/rose7.htm Rose Cake I], [http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/232273 Rose Cake II], [http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,176,159163-248201,00.html Rose Cake III], [http://www.recipezaar.com/187378 Rose Cake IV], and [http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/29/Almond Rose Cake71212?.shtml Rose Cake V]. Typically, rose comes in the form of rose jam, rosehip jam, crushed rose petals, rose syrup, and rose water. Common additions include cardamom and crushed almonds, as well as cinnamon and lemon zest.

As for method, what’s really interesting about these rose cakes is that sometimes, you make 1/2 of it almond batter, 1/2 of it rose batter, and then you add to pan in alternations. These recipes, however, involve springform pans, and I’d rather not start out this recipe the wrong way (although the recipes that aren’t in springforms seem a little sketch as a result). Also, due to the shortage of rose products in State College, recipes 2 and 5 are really the only reasonable ones for me. With recipe 5 out because of the lack of a springform pan, I’m left with the Epicurious basic recipe.

Of course, the basic recipe needs a little adaptation—just because I can. Standing before me, as it were, I have in my cupboards a few different ingredients kicking around: rosehip marmelade, rose tea, rosewater, pistachios, almonds, cardamom, and candied ginger. I just have to figure out where which ingredient should go, or if it should even appear in the cake at all. Some ideas:

• Rosehip marmelade filling
• Rosewater buttercream
• Ginger cardamom cake
• Rosewater cardamom cake
• Ginger rose cake
• Rosewater and rose marmelade cake
• Pistachio-rose cake
• Pistachio buttercream
• Rosewater-pistachio buttercream
• Rosewater-almond buttercream
• Almond buttercream
• Almond Italian meringue buttercream
• Rose Italian meringue buttercream
• Ginger buttercream

Some combos

• Rose-ginger cake with pistachio buttercream
• Rose-ginger cake with rose pistachio buttercream
• Rose-pistachio cake with rose buttercream
• Rose spice cake (ginger and cardamom) with pistachio buttercream
• Ginger and rose tea cake with rosewater buttercream
• Rose cardamom cake with ginger pistachio buttercream

I feel like I should have some rose in the buttercream, to make the cake fragrant. Some cinnamon might really help the cake, and I might want to use honey instead of caster sugar or buttermilk instead of milk or almond extract instead of vanilla to keep the flavors subtle.

Perhaps Andrew and I will hold a scientific exploration of flavor combos tomorrow. Also on the table: buy green cardamom pods, take out seeds, crush with mortar and pestle. We bought $10 of ground cardamom today, only to find out now that everyone prefers freshly ground. Of course, we should have known…but the pods looked so unappetizing in the store today.

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Andrew and I did, after all, do a round of taste tests. I whipped up a cake mix just to test with. For someone who hasn’t really got the whole moist, dense, simple yellow cake thing down yet, I didn’t want to whip up potentially the best plain cake I’d ever made, only to eat tiny bits of it and ruin it with potentially disgusting combinations. (Now I think I know what the fear of failure really means.) Enter Pillsbury. Perhaps it was a mistake, though, because the Sheer Yellow Strength of the box mix overpowered the experimental additions—nearly compromising the experiment at its inception.

Of course, it wasn’t the only mistake. I forgot the control group! No “cake mix without any additions” cupcake. Ugh! Anyway, after making various combos of rosewater, rosehip marmelade, crushed pistachio, ground pistachio, and diced crystallized ginger, I had a palette that looked like this:

Meanwhile, the buttercream palette:

Performing the taste test was the fun part. We drug the cupcakes and batter into the living room (more accurately, Andrew did, as I managed to cut my thumb on the grinder blade while waiting for the cupcakes to cool), grabbed a pitcher of water, and started sampling. It’s a good thing we hadn’t had much for dinner:

The winner? Pistachio cardamom cake with rosewater buttercream. The pistachio was ugly in the buttercream, tho’ yummy, and the crushed ginger was distracting. Meanwhile, the rose marmelade was disgusting in anything (sigh), the Italian meringue buttercream became squishy and rubbery after a day in the fridge, and as for the rose tea, I decided to ditch it completely (didn’t want the earthy black-tea flavor in this cake). Perhaps I’ll put some rosewater in the batter, or some ground ginger in the buttercream, but that’s the skeleton. The rosewater doesn’t really “show up” in the cake; it kind of disappears inside the egg yolk flavor or something (!); it’s too subtle. However, I want some of it in there, just so it doesn’t taste like the cake is vanilla-extract base—to prep it for the rosewater buttercream.

I resent that the recipe will end up looking a bit like the Epicurious one. After doing 14 permutations of cake and 9 of buttercream, I’d like to have come up with something different. Sure, I’m using pistachio instead of almond, but not to come up with a new technique….very sad. It will be a chiffon cake, not made in a tube pan, but oh, to heck with it! Who really wants to decorate a tube cake? All of them end up in the “confectioner’s sugar drizzle” category. You can’t fool me by adding fresh squeezed citrus or a little bit o’ rum. It’s still just a boring glaze. If you can’t decorate on it, I’m not interested.

The original recipe is here, but after my variations, it looks like this:

• 1 cup cake flour
• 14 tablespoons superfine sugar, divided
• 1 � teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 4 � tablespoons water
• 1 � tablespoon rosewater
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon hazelnut extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom seeds
• � cup ground pistachios
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, sifted or whisked

Preheat oven to 325�F. Butter 8-inch-diameter cake pan. Spray pan. Line pan bottoms with parchment paper; spray parchment. Sift flour, 7 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, and salt into large bowl. Whisk yolks and next 4 ingredients until smooth. Add yolk mixture to dry ingredients; whisk until smooth. Sift in pistachios and cardamom; blend until just mixed. Beat egg whites until foamy; add 1/4 tsp sifted cream of tartar; beat till soft peaks form. In a stream, add 7 tablespoons baker’s sugar; beat until stiff peak stage just begins (still glossy but forms mounds). Fold whites into batter (add a little egg white to batter and mix in; add rest in 2 even batches) (should take 1 minute or less). Pour into pan. Bake until golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.

Cutting the parchment circle:

Changes made

• -Used 1 pan instead of 2
• -Definitely use superfine sugar
• -Substitute 1 � tablespoons of water with the same of rosewater
• -Substitute lemon peel with hazelnut extract
• -Increase amount of cardamom; used ground instead of seeds
• -Add ground pistachios
• -Use familiar buttercream recipe with rosewater added to it
• -Different folding technique

The cake came out at a brisk 27 minutes. The sides seriously shrunk from the sides of the pan as it cooled:

That’s major shrinkage. Chiffon cakes do tend to shrink, so that’s okay, except for the fact that it therefore came out lopsided:

Not too attractive! Notice, too, that the parchment circle at the bottom of the cake pan actually made a thin sliver of cake detach itself from the rest of the cake. I’m not sure what the problem was, but maybe I’ll make the circle a tad bit bigger next time…?

After shearing the dome off, I tasted the cake: very nice. Spicy, not sweet at all, a real change of pace. The crumb was tender and even, and unlike the normal greasy feeling of an oil-based cake, I couldn’t even tell I had used oil; doesn’t feel greasy at all.

The decoration stage was tons of fun. The crumb coat frozen for 20 minutes did the trick again (what a champ). In fact, the crumb coat lowered the temperature of the second coat of frosting, making the smoothing process a lot easier overall. The frosting went exactly where I guided it to go, not even melting in the lovely August heat.

At the Wilton cake decorating room in Michael’s, I really felt I had something way different from the neon pink, neon yellow, and neon green beauties of my classmates:

On the second day, the cake was dry. Majorly dry. The addition of 1/2 cup pistachio crumbs made it impossible to keep it moist. Next time, I’ll omit the same volume flour, or add extra butter. Sigh.

But it was pretty! And it featured my first Wilton roses.

What I Learned

1. Don’t play with recipes until you’ve first made it the stated way.
2. You really do need a variety of cake pans to create the broadest range of cakes.
3. I don’t trust the parchment paper lining for the cake pans. For an 8” or 9” pan, the cake should come out perfectly well if properly greased.
4. Don’t forget the Bake-Even strips!
5. Additions of ground nuts require some kind of balancing: less flour or more butter.
6. Delicate flavors require delicate frostings (ie, not regular buttercream).
7. Superfine sugar and cake flour do yield a finer crumb.
8. If you want a special flavor, don’t hold back. You can balance the frosting and cake with each other to correct.
9. Just keep adding coloring gel or paste if you don’t have the color right; it will get there, so be patient.
10. Consider separating eggs by cracking full egg into bowl; gently fish yolk out and let white drain off fingers.
11. Make sure you use unsalted nuts.

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