Vegan Persian Love Cake
Vegan Persian love cake - This fragrant cake is beautifully moist and delicately flavoured with lemon, rose, cardamom, pistachios and almonds.
Servings 10 people
Ingredients
Cake:
- 100 g (3 ½ oz) vegan butter melted
- 150 g (⅔ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
- 120 ml (½ cup) unsweetened non-dairy milk (I use soy)
- 120 g (½ cup) plain non-dairy yoghurt
- finely grated zest of 1 large orange and juice of half (40-50ml juice)
- 1 Tablespoon rose water
- 12 cardamom pods
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 200 g (2 cups) ground almonds
- 200 g (1 + ⅔ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- ¼ tsp salt
- 50 g (5 Tablespoons) chopped pistachios
Drizzle:
- 4 Tablespoons caster or granulated sugar
- 4 Tablespoons lemon juice
Icing:
- 200 g (1 + ⅓ cups) icing (powdered) sugar
- juice of 1 lemon
- chopped pistachios and edible dried rose petals to garnish
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 190°C/170℃ fan/375°F/gas mark 5. Grease a deep, 23 cm/9 inch round cake tin with a removable base and line the bottom with baking parchment.
- Whisk together the melted butter, sugar, milk, yogurt, orange zest and juice and rose water in a large bowl.
- Place the cardamom pods in a mortar and bash with a pestle until the seeds come away from the pods. Discard the pods and grind the seeds to a fine powder.
- Sift together the ground cardamom, nutmeg, almonds, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
- Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet annd stir with a balloon whisk until no dry lumps remain. Fold in the chopped pistachios.
- Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and level the surface. Bake for about 35 minutes until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
- When the cake has nearly finished baking make the syrup. Place the caster sugar and lemon juice in a small pan over a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved, bring up to the boil then remove from the heat.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then poke holes in the top of the cake with a toothpick. Drizzle the syrup all over the top of the cake making sure that it soaks all of it up. Leave to cool in the tin for about 30 minutes then carefully turn the cake out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
- To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and gradually stir in the lemon juice until it reaches a thick but pour-able consistency. Spoon the icing all over the top of the cake and gently coax it towards the edges with the back of a spoon.
- Sprinkle the cake with chopped pistachios and edible dried rose petals and serve.
Notes
- See post above for tips, details and step-by-step photos.
- USE SCALES. As with all of my baking recipes I really do recommend using the metric measurements with a digital scales rather than the cup conversions. Cups are a wildly inaccurate measuring system and you will get far better, more consistent results using a scale, not to mention that it is also easier and less messy than cups!
- If you don't like the flavour of rose then orange blossom water would be delicious instead!