A simple cake becomes something really special with sweet cardamom milk sprinkled with rose petals and freeze-dried raspberries.
Preparation time
less than 30 mins
Cooking time
30 mins to 1 hour
Serves
Serves 12
Dietary
Vegetarian
By Nadiya HussainFrom Saturday Kitchen
Ingredients
For the cake
- 8 medium eggs
- 250g/9oz caster sugar
- 250g/9oz plain flour
- 1 lemon, zest only
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp almond extract oil, for greasing
For the sweet milk
- 397g tin condensed milk
- 4 cardamom pods
- 100ml/3½oz full-fat milk
For the top
- 600ml/20fl oz double cream
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
Topping options:- chopped almonds or pistachios or
- desiccated coconut or
- rose petals blended with freeze dried raspberries
Method
Preheat the oven to 170C/150C Fan/Gas 3½. Line and grease the base and sides of a 23x33cm/9x13in brownie tin.
Put the eggs in a mixing bowl with the caster sugar. Whisk on a high speed using a hand-held mixer until the mixture triples in size, is light in colour and very fluffy. When the whisks are removed, the trail of the mixture should just sit on top. This can take up to 10 minutes.
Sprinkle in the flour and fold through using a metal spoon. Add the lemon zest, vanilla and almond extracts and keep folding until you have no pockets of flour. Pour the mixture into the tin, carefully level off and bake for 35 minutes.
Take out of the oven and leave to cool in the tin.
To make the sweet milk, pour the tin of condensed milk into a jug. Crush the cardamom pods, remove the husks and crush the little black seeds to a fine powder in a pestle and mortar. Add to the condensed milk along with the milk and mix well.
Pour the milk mixture all over the still-warm cake and allow to soak through, then pop into the fridge to chill completely. Whip up the cream with the icing sugar until you have soft peaks. Take the cake out of the tin and layer on the cream (see the topping options for decoration ideas). Cut into squares and serve.