Hello my fellow foodies! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas 🙂

I’ve had Rose Levy’s Heavenly Cakes cookbook for a long long time, but for some reason I haven’t cooked a lot from it. Every now and than I flick through its pages, looking at the beautiful pictures of those amazing cakes, and say to myself “I’ll bake this one next!”; and life gets in the way! 😆

So today I broke this cycle and made my second cake from this lovely book. The cake is a ‘génoise’, which means unlike sponge cakes, it uses power of egg white to get air and volume in the cake. That’s why it’s so incredibly light and fluffy in texture 😀

In her book, Rose applies a triple sec syrup to the beautiful rose-shaped génoise, once it is baked and cooled. I used a heritage bundt pan, and so decided to incorporate the flavour of rose in it instead.

So here, the génoise itself is as per Rose Levy’s recipe, but I have changed the syrup ingredients and added a rose flavoured icing to the génoise as well.

I hope you love this cake; its delicate, not too sweet and flavour of rose is just beautiful.

Happy Baking! ❤

Ingredients- Part 1: Génoise

Clarified butter: 50 g
Eggs: 5
Caster sugar: 125 g
All purpose flour: 66 g
Corn flour: 60 g
Pure vanilla extract: 1 teaspoon

Method- Part 1: Génoise

1. Warm the clarified butter until hot (microwave or stovetop). Then add the vanilla extract and set aside; but keep it warm.
2. Add the eggs and caster sugar to the bowl of your stander.
3. Put a pot of water on stove and bring to boil.
4. Once your water is boiling, place the stand mixer bowl on top of the hot water pot and start whisking constantly (to prevent curdling).
5. Keep whisking until the egg and sugar mixture is warm to touch.
6. Place the bowl in your stand mixer and whisk the egg batter on high for at least 5 minutes. Your mixture will get very big which is exactly what you want!!
7. Meanwhile:
   • Sift the flours together.
   • Grease your bundt pan completely and thoroughly.
   • Preheat your oven to 160C.
8. Take 1 cup of the beaten mixture and add it to clarified butter. Mix it thoroughly.
9. Take the egg mixture bowl off the stand mixer and then add half the flour mixture to it. Stir gently but quickly, trying not to lose the air in the mixture as much as possible.
10. Repeat with the remaining flour mixture.
11. Finally, add the butter mixture to it and stir until incorporated.
12. TIP: Make sure you scrape the bottom of bowl too, as dry flour might sink there and not get mixed through the batter.
13. Immediately pour your batter into your greased pan.
14. Smooth the top of the batter gently, then place in oven.
15. Bake for 20-30 minutes.
16. TIP: You know the génoise is baked when the top is golden brown, and the top edges start to come off from the pan.
17. Remove from the oven, and while still hot, loosen the top edges of the genoise from the pan using a small metal spatula.
18. Again, while still hot, demould the génoise on a greased wire rack and let cool completely.

Ingredients- Part 2: Rosewater Whisky Syrup

White Sugar: 66 g
Water: 158 g
Rosewater: 3 tablespoons
Whisky: 3 tablespoons

Method- Part 2: Rosewater Whisky Syrup

1. In a small pot, add the water and sugar.
2. Stir constantly over medium heat until all sugar dissolved and the mixture comes to a boil.
3. Remove the pot from heat, place a tight lid on it and set aide to cool completely.
4. Once completely cooled, add the whisky and rosewater and stir to combine. Pour it into a measuring cup with a spout.
5. Place the cooled cake on a wire rack, with a tray underneath.
6. Pour the syrup gently on the cake, letting the excess to drip beneath it, on the tray. Make sure you add the syrup to moisten the genoise only. Once you have done that, you don’t need to add any more syrup, i.e. you might have left over syrup.

Ingredients-Part 3: Rosewater Icing

Rosewater: 4 tablespoons
Soft icing sugar mixture: 1.5 cups
Red food colouring: 1 small drop

Method- Part 3: Rosewater Icing

1. Put the icing mixture in a bowl, then add rosewater one tablespoon at a time.
2. Make sure you mix well in between in each addition. If you want a thicker you can add less rosewater.
3. Once you are happy with the consistency of the icing, add one tiny drop of red food colouring and stir until you end up with a nice pink icing.
4. Pour the icing over the cake. Do not pour too much, as the cake will become too wet.
5. Decorate with some dried rose petals and that’s it! You have made your Rose Genoise!

Enjoy! ❤