Go Back

Persian Love Cake

This cake has lovely notes of rose and cardamom. The almond meal and semolina gives it an incredible texture, pistachios add a nice crunch.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 50 minutes
Servings: 10
Course: Dessert
Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cups (200g)  almond meal
  • 1 ½ cups (165g)  semolina
  • 1 tbsp  baking powder
  • a pinch ground nutmeg
  • 1.5 tsp  ground cardamom
  • 120g   (8 tbsp)  unsalted butter (room temperature)
  • 1 cup (175g) brown sugar (Brauner Zucker)
  • 2 eggs (or flax eggs: see notes below)
  • 1 cup (250g)  plain yoghurt
  • Zest of one orange
  • ¼ cup 25 grams pistachios (chopped)
For the Syrup:
  • 80g sugar
  • 1 Tbsp dried rind of orange (optional)
  • 2 Tbsp rose water
  • 75 ml water

Method
 

  1. Preheat oven 180C. Grease and line a 22cm cake pan.
  2. Beat butter and sugar with an electric beater until incorporated. Add eggs, beat until smooth. Then add yoghurt and orange zest, beat until smooth.
  3. Mix almond meal, semolina, baking powder, nutmeg and cardamon in bowl.
  4. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Stir until mixed through.
  5. Pour into pan, smoothen surface. Scatter over pistachios.
  6. Bake 50 minutes to 1 hour, until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
  7. Poke 30 - 40 holes all over the cake using a skewer. Pour warm syrup over while cake is still hot. Leave to soak for 1 hour+ before removing from pan.
  8. Decorate with rose buds. Cool then slice to serve.
For the Syrup:
  1. Place ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to simmer and stir to dissolve sugar. Simmer for 2 minutes. Keep warm (or reheat) for pouring.

Notes

  • Do not replace almond meal with almond flour. These are two different things. Almond meal is made by grinding almonds (with or without skin). To make almond flour, the oil is extracted to give it a more flour-like consistency.
  • If you want to make an eggless cake, use flaxseed mixture instead. For every egg, take 1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds and 2 & 1/2 tablespoons room temperature water. Mix and leave to rest for about 7 minutes. Add this instead of eggs in the recipe.
  • In Germany semolina is available by the name Grieß. For this recipe, I have used Hartweizen-Grieß from Aldi.
  • You can use regular sugar instead of brown sugar in the recipe. I have used Brauner Zucker from Aldi.