Recipe Road Test: Ptolemy Mann’s rose-geranium cake

Recipe for sophisticated Middle Eastern-inspired, gluten-free cake with rose geranium

I was browsing in the farmers’ market at the San Francisco Ferry Building the other week when I found a stall selling bunches of rose-geranium leaves. For those not in the know, it’s a specific type of geranium with rough leaves that smell like roses. I didn’t hesitate – I immediately swooped in and bought a bunch. I had a plan.

When I went on the Arvon Foundation food writing course two years ago, I met London-based textiles artist Ptolemy Mann. Ptolemy told us all about her favourite recipe, a fabulous rose geranium cake of Middle Eastern origin. She described this as her seduction cake and claimed she had reduced grown men to tears in anticipation of the cake. Ever since then I’ve wanted to try making the cake but as I didn’t have a rose-geranium plant and never saw it on sale, I had this one mentally shelved for later.

When I found the rose-geranium leaves, I decided now was the time. We had been invited to a holiday party in the South Bay on Saturday night so I decided to take this along as my contribution. I also made spanokopita based on my spinach pie recipe, only with individual triangles and rolls rather than a whole pie. I used half spinach and half dandelion leaves – the dandelion being another farmers’ market impulse buy.

Now, don’t let a little thing like lack of rose-geranium leaves stop YOU from making the cake. When I actually read her recipe closely, it turns out the leaves are optional and mostly decorative. I’m sure they do add to the flavour as well but the rose water is a bigger contributor.

So here is the recipe and my comments. It’s worth a go – it’s sophisticated and exotic yet sweet and moist. The recipe is also gluten free, which I know is important for some readers.

Recipe – Scented rose-geranium cake with cardamom crème fraîche

Serves 8

For the crème fraîche
10-14 cardamom pods
500ml crème fraîche (full or half fat)

For the cake
6-8 rose-geranium leaves (optional)
Butter, for greasing
4 medium eggs
175g caster sugar
250g ground almonds

For the syrup
3 rose-geranium leaves, snipped from the main plant stem (optional)
2 tbsp rose water
2 tbsp pale runny honey
Juice and zest of 1 lemon

Slice open the cardamom pods lengthways and remove the seeds with the tip of the knife. Grind the seeds, using a pestle and mortar, to release their distinctive scent. Add to the crème fraîche, cover and leave in the fridge for at least 1 hour – the longer you leave it, the stronger the flavour.

Heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5. Wash and pat dry the rose-geranium leaves. Grease the base of a spring-form cake tin with a diameter of 22-26cm and arrange the leaves face down in a decorative manner. Beat the eggs with an electric whisk until frothy and then add the sugar, continuing to whisk until the mixture peaks softly. Carefully fold in the ground almonds with a metal spoon.

Pour the egg mixture into the cake tin, taking care to keep the geranium leaves flat. Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown and pulling away from the sides of the tin. Test in the middle with a skewer: if the tip comes out clean, the cake is done. Leave to cool for at least 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, place all the syrup ingredients in a small saucepan, along with 8 tbsp water, and bring to the boil. Simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. Remove from the heat.

The cake should now be cool enough to take out of the tin. Place a large plate face down over the top and carefully flip both over. Pour the hot syrup slowly over the cake, allowing time for the liquid to soak into the sponge. Cover and let it sit for at least 30 minutes, or even overnight. Serve with the cardamom crème fraîche on the side.

My road test

A note on ingredients: I couldn’t find medium-sized eggs so I used large eggs. I couldn’t find caster sugar (and I don’t think they call it that in the US), so I used super-fine white cane sugar instead. Crème fraîche is expensive in the US so I used half crème fraîche and half whipped cream. I used an equivalent amount of decortitated cardamom seeds, on the basis of about four or five seeds per pod.

Method: I do not currently own an electric whisk. I used a rotary egg beater and despite the best efforts of both myself and my husband, we could not get the egg and sugar mix to form soft peaks. We got it as close as we could but an electric whisk would certainly make this job easier! The recipe does not mention straining the syrup but I decided to remove the geranium leaves before pouring the syrup on the cake.

Result: The cake looked like a savoury egg and spinach tart, but it smelled heavenly and tasted great. The cream was delicious and the cake was best with quite a lot of cream.

Verdict

It didn’t make anyone cry but I think everyone enjoyed it. The flavours were very grown-up but that’s my sort of thing. I would make this again, with or without the rose-geranium leaves. I would also be curious to experiment. I think it might be nice with polenta as well as or instead of ground almond, like these strawberry and polenta cupcakes.

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I didn’t have my camera with me so a big thank you to Luca for taking the photos at the party!

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This is the last week to buy Passports with Purpose raffle tickets. We still need to raise $7,000 to pay for the vegetable garden and water filters for our school. Great prizes are up for grabs and here are the ones with the best odds.

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