Mum’s favourite Persian Love cake recipe

Imagine if you will, the heady promise of a traditional lemon drizzle cake taken to new exotic heights with fragrant Middle Eastern flavours and spices, then decorated with some of your beautiful dried rose petals; perfect for a special afternoon tea or summer celebration. A moist almond, cardamom and pistachio cake is lightly drenched with lemon and rose water syrup while still warm, then spread with a zesty lemon icing. This is what my mother insists on calling ‘a proper icing’, none of that fluffy, buttery stuff that the rest of us could eat all evening with a spoon. She says it tastes even better on the second day, when all the beautiful flavours really start to shine through; the perfect recipe for a little summer hygge!

A word about rosewater; rather than buying it in the baking section of your local supermarket, have a look in the World Foods aisle, where it seems to be about a third of the price. Secondly, different brands can vary wildly in strength. If in doubt, go easy with it, as our hope is the cake will evoke the heady scent of a warm summer’s day, rather than a bottle of complimentary hotel shampoo. 

Ingredients

For the cake

110g butter, softened

150g caster sugar

250g ground almonds

180g self raising flour

4 eggs

2 large tablespoons Greek yoghurt

10 cardamom pods

Zest and juice of one lemon

1 tbsp rosewater

25g green pistachio kernels, chopped

For the drizzle

2 tbsp caster sugar 

Juice of half a lemon

1 tsp rosewater

For the icing

150g icing sugar

Juice of half a lemon

25g green pistachio kernels, chopped

Edible dried rose petals

1. Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C. Grease and line an 8 inch baking tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Using a pestle and mortar, crush the cardamom pods until the shells split. Remove the husks and then grind the seeds that are left behind until they begin to release their wonderful floral fragrance.
3. Using either a stand mixer or an electric whisk, beat together the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one by one, accompanying each with a hefty spoonful of flour to stop the mixture curdling.
5. Tip in the rest of the flour, ground almonds, yoghurt, lemon juice, zest and rosewater and mix again until thoroughly combined.
6. Lastly stir in the chopped pistachios and scrape into your prepared tin. Bake for 40-45 minutes in the centre of the oven or until a poked-in skewer comes out clean (I tend to check it after about 35 minutes and then pop a piece of tin foil over the top if it looks like it is browning too quickly.
7. As soon as you have removed the cake from the oven, place the ingredients for the drizzle in a small pan and set over a medium heat. Bring to a simmer and stir until all the sugar has dissolved.
8. Carefully tip the still warm cake out onto a wire rack and peel off the greaseproof paper (the top is now essentially the bottom, giving you a lovely flat surface to ice). Poke lots of little holes all over the cake with a cocktail stick then slowly pour over the drizzle. 
9. Once the cake is completely cold, prepare the icing. Sieve the icing sugar into a large bowl and then stir in the lemon juice. Keep adding drops of cold water, a few at a time, until you have a thick icing. Tip it into the middle of the cake, then gently encourage it out towards the sides using the back of a spoon.
10. Sprinkle over the chopped pistachios and dried rose petals.