Lavender Cake
If you love the smell of lavender you may very well like this cake! It’s quite unusual but I really like it. Floral but not too overpowering.
In creating this recipe I tried to make sure that the taste of the lavender really came through, taking inspiration from an old family recipe, and beginning to experiment by infusing the milk with lavender. I have added a whole lemon as it felt a bit too heavy without it taste-wise and I think the lemon zest & juice lifts it nicely.
Finishing this cake with a glaze just makes the shape and texture of the tin I used just pop and adding a bit of food colouring to the glaze even more so.
This cake is lovely to enjoy with a cup of Earl Grey tea (maybe add a few lavender buds to the tea or make my Lavender Haze Cocktail – opens a new tab – to go with it), or share it on a summer garden picnic or a bring along with you on a woodland walk.
For this recipe I used a 1.4L cake tin from Ikea. But any funky shaped (bundt)tin can work nicely for the glaze to be shown off on.
Ingredients
**for the lavender cake**
180ml almond milk
or milk of choice
3 tablespoons fresh lavender
pick off the individual flowers & finely chop
85g butter
unsalted & softened, plus extra to grease your tin
200g sugar
granulated
2 eggs
whole
240g plain flour
sieved
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
sieved
lemon zest
of a whole lemon, finely grated, set some aside (for sprinkling over the cake once iced)
juice of 1/2 a lemon
or use a bit more if it's a small one, careful not to make the batter too wet
**for the lavender glaze**
120ml almond milk
or milk of choice
1 tablespoon lavender buds
pick off the individual flowers, use fresh or dried
250g royal icing sugar
sieved
purple food colouring
to taste, more drops = deeper purple
fresh lavender flowers
removed from stem, to sprinkle over
lemon zest
finely grated, to sprinkle over
Directions
Cake:
- Preheat the oven to 160°C. Grease your cake tin (or shape) with butter and coat in fine breadcrumb (this will help get the cake out the mould better – I used crumbled up Dutch crisp bakes (Tesco’s has those) – don’t use that orange crumb stuff, it’s horrid, you could use panko breadcrumb and make it finer).
- Combine the milk and fresh lavender flowers in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat to a simmer, then remove from heat, and allow to cool slightly. No need to strain, both milk and flowers go into the batter.
- In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth, fluffy & creamy.
- Beat in the eggs until the mixture is light and fluffy. Careful to not over mix.
- Combine the flour, baking powder; stir into the creamed butter mixture alternately with the lavender milk until just blended, then add the lemon zest and juice and mix until combined. Don’t over mix, as you’ll risk it to split.
- Pour into the prepared pan/tin. Give it a little slap on the counter to remove any big air bubbles and to level out the batter in your pan/tin.
- Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a wooden pick inserted into the crown of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.
Lavender Glaze:
- Place the milk in a saucepan over medium heat. When it starts to boil, take the pan off the heat and add the lavender buds.
- Let the mixture steep for 5-8 minutes, then strain the milk. It’ll have a greyish purple hue – this is normal.
- Whisk the infused milk into the icing sugar, a tablespoon at a time (I ended up using 5 tbsps), until you get a smooth and opaque glaze that is fairly thick – but still pourable.
- Add a few drops of food colouring to create a purple glaze, not needed but does make it look pretty spectacular.
- Pour or spoon the glaze over the cooled cake. You may want a tray or something to collect the excess icing that will drip off of your cake underneath.
- Sprinkle over the lemon zest and some fresh lavender flowers.
Enjoy with a nice cup of tea! Earl grey works well or if it’s really warm out a nice ice cold cloudy lemonade works well.