Pomegranate Cake With A Orange Blossom Whip Cream Frosting

Pomegranate molasses has become one of my favourite ingredients. It’s a great little syrup that can be used in so many different ways. You can even make your own reducing pomegranate juice with or without sugar until it’s a thick syrup. Doing that would cost a pretty penny here with the cost of pomegranates so it’s a more reasonable option to buy the actual prepared syrup or molasses.

It has a wonderful sweetness with a bit of tartness and the familiar slight bitterness of most molasses. It can be used in salad dressings, great in Mediterranean dips, great as a glaze for meats, can be added to drinks and cocktails and even drizzled over grilled or roasted veggies. The options are pretty endless.

When I saw this recipe in Delicious magazine I had to check it out. I was curious about what they used in the cake to make it a pomegranate one. I checked it out and it was a fabulously simple recipe using pomegranate molasses so you know what that means – I had to make it.

The combination of the pomegranate molasses and orange water blossom give this cake a bright and fragrant flavour. The cake itself is a little on the heavier side. The reason for that is that it’s a soaked cake. After it bakes and cools you poke holes into it and pour the molasses into it giving it a syrupy moist texture and making it a little heavier like any other syrupy cake. I love these kind of cakes. Greeks make a couple of cakes this way and I adore them. We soak ours in honey or a sugar water syrup. Lovely notes of citrus run through the syrup and make the cake so irresistibly delicious! So you can imagine that I had to give this recipe a try.

The original recipe called for a mascarpone icing and I absolutely love mascarpone icing but I thought this cake would be lovely with a lighter more airy frosting since it’s a little weightier. It turned out wonderfully and so glad I made it and know you will too. Check out the Delicious Magazine website for the original recipe to get the mascarpone icing. Whatever way you chose to frost it will be fabulous!

Ingredients

For the cake

• 1¼ sticks of Butter
• ¼ cup Coconut sugar or brown sugar
• ½ cup Granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp of pomegranate molasses plus and extra 75ml of it
• 1¼ cup of All purpose flour
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 50 ml of Buttermilk

For the icing

• 1 cup of whipping cream
• 2 tbsp of sugar
• ¼ tsp vanilla
• ¼ tsp orange blossom water
• Pomegranate and edible roses for garnishing
  

Directions

For the cake

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease, line with parchment and grease again and dust with flour a 9 inch round cake pan

2. In a small sauce pan on low heat melt your butter and sugar and the pour into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool for a couple of minutes while you prep the dry ingredients

3. Sift the flour, baking soda and salt into another bowl and set aside

4. Going back to the butter sugar mixture add the eggs and beat one at a time until well incorporated and then stir in the two tbsp of pomegranate molasses

5. Fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until well combined and then stir in the buttermilk

6. Pour batter into the the baking pan and bake for approx 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan on a cooling rack and then invert onto a plate, remove the parchment lining the bottom of cake and poke wholes into it and all over it while it’s still warm.

7. Pour the molasses all over the cake and let it cool completely before icing
   

For the icing

1. In a large bowl beat the sugar, whipping cream, vanilla extract and orange blossom water until stiff peeks form

2. Spoon the icing on cake and smooth it over and top with pomegranate and rose dried edible flowers
   

Recipe adapted by Delicious Magazine