English Rose Cake Recipes

ROSE WATER CAKE

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9-inch cake pan.
• Cream sugar and butter for cake together in a bowl with an electric mixer. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then stir in vanilla extract. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt separately, then add to mix, and cream together. Stir in half-and-half and rose water. Add a few drops of food coloring to turn pinkish (or whatever color you want). Pour into the prepared pan.
• Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Run a table knife around the edges to loosen. Invert carefully onto a serving plate or cooling rack. Let cool, about 30 minutes.
• While cake cools, beat confectioners' sugar and butter with an electric mixer on low speed, then increase speed to medium for about 3 minutes. Add half-and-half and vanilla extract and beat for 1 minute more. Add more half-and-half if frosting is too thick. Frost cooled cake.

ROSE CAKE

Steps:

• Trim the tops of the cakes with a long serrated knife to make the surfaces level. With a small offset spatula, spread top of bottom cake layer with 1 1/4 cups frosting. Place the second cake layer, cut side down, on top of the first cake layer
• Gently brush away loose crumbs from top and sides of cake with a pastry brush. With the offset spatula, spread about 2 cups frosting over top and sides of cake to form a crumb coat. Refrigerate cake until frosting is firm, about 15 minutes.
• With a large offset spatula, spread about 2 more cups frosting over top and sides to form a second coat. Smooth top and remove excess frosting with the large offset spatula. Smooth sides with a bench scraper. Return cake to refrigerator, and chill until second coat is firm, about 15 minutes.
• Decorate cake: Using a toothpick or wooden skewer, mark a pattern on the frosting to serve as a guideline for piping stems. Pipe stems, using the #3 round tip, on the cake. With the #103 petal tip, make one petal. Make a second, smaller petal on top of the first. Pipe a strip of frosting from left to right over the base of the two petals. Repeat, from right to left, angling the tip slightly away from the bud, releasing pressure at the end. With the #352 leaf tip, make leaves at the bud's base. Switch to the #3 tip to fill in under the leaves and connect to stems. Pipe dots against the stem, pulling off at an angle for thorns. To make leaves for large roses, switch to the #70 leaf tip. Hold the bag at a 45 degree angle to the cake with the tip's flat side up. Squeeze bag, and pull out from the base of the leaf, releasing pressure and lifting to form the end.
• Pipe rosebuds: You'll need a "flower nail" (we used a #7), available in baking-supply stores, to make roses. (When you need both hands to switch tips or colors, anchor the nail in a block of floral foam or in a potato with a flat-cut bottom.) Dab frosting on the top of the nail to secure a small square of parchment paper on top. Using the #12 round tip, squeeze bag gently and pull up slowly to make an acorn shape on top of the parchment. Switch to the #103 petal tip. Holding tip against the point of the acorn, wide end down and the narrow end angled in toward the acorn's center, pipe a wide strip as you turn the nail, enrobing the top completely. Turning the nail as you go, make two slightly arched petals that each reach around half of the circumference of the acorn. Continue turning the nail, making longer petals that overlap, until you reach the bottom of the rose. Gently slide the parchment with the rose off the nail and onto a baking sheet, and refrigerate about twenty minutes; use a small offset spatula to transfer roses to the top of a cake.
• Transfer cake to a serving platter. Arrange roses on cake. Fit a pastry bag with the #5 round tip, and fill with frosting. Make a border at bottom of cake: Pipe overlapping teardrop shapes (to resemble thorns) by applying pressure quickly and releasing as you pull away.
• Refrigerate cake until ready to serve. Let stand at room temperature 20 minutes before serving. Slice into wedges: To avoid crumbs on surface, make each cut with one downward motion, pulling knife back toward you (not upward) and wiping knife clean after each cut.

ENGLISH ROSE CAKE

Steps:

• Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Grease and line the base and sides of 3 x 20cm round loose-bottomed cake tins with baking parchment. Tip all the ingredients for the cake into a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk until well combined. Divide the mixture between the 3 cake tins and smooth the tops. Bake for 45 mins, swapping the tins halfway through so they cook evenly. Leave to cool for 10 mins in the tins, then remove and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
• To make the rose syrup, put the sugar in a pan with 100ml water and heat until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat and bubble for 1-2 mins, then remove from the heat. Add the rose water: start with 1 tsp and taste, as some varieties are much stronger than others - just be careful as the syrup will be really hot. Spoon half the syrup over the 3 sponges and set aside.
• Add 2 tbsp of the syrup to the raspberries and crush them with a fork. Push the raspberries through a sieve into a bowl and discard the seeds. Sift in the icing sugar and mix to a smooth icing. In a second bowl, add another 2 tbsp of the syrup and the vanilla to the cream and whisk until it holds soft peaks. Chill until needed.
• To assemble, place one cake, flat-side up, on a plate or cake stand, and top with half the cream and a third of the remaining raspberries (see tips, below). Sandwich another cake on top and add the remaining cream, another third of the raspberries, then the last cake. Smooth the raspberry icing over the top, letting it drizzle down the sides. To decorate, we used a mixture of rose petal pieces (available from cookshops or online), homemade crystallised rose petals (see step-by-step, above) and the reserved raspberries.