Rosewater Mini Rose Bundt Cakes

These rosewater cakes were made in a mini bundt tin but you could also make them as cupcakes with rosewater buttercream frosting. The cakes have a surprise on the inside - they are bright pink! I made them for a colleague's birthday as I knew she wouldn't want a big cake and a lot of fuss but I wanted to make something. I received the Nordicware mini rose bundt tin for Christmas and wanted to try it out as well!

I thought rosewater would be the perfect flavour to go with the rose cake tin. When I want to find a recipe using a specific ingredient I am more likely to turn to the internet than a recipe book- books are great for browsing but it can take a long time to find a specific recipe if you don't know where to look! I found this recipe on the Australian website Taste.com.au but did not include the frosting, and I used vegetable oil instead of canola oil.

You need:

1 cup vegetable oil (250ml)

1 and 1/2 cups caster sugar (330g)

2 eggs

1 cup plain yogurt (280g)

2 cups self-raising flour (300g)

2 tbsp rosewater

pink food colouring

Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the oil, sugar and eggs in a large bowl.

Gently mix in the yogurt then the flour.

I then added the pink food colouring.

Here's a close-up of the Nordicware bundt tin I got for Christmas, it's very pretty!

And here you can see the side view

I sprayed each indent in the tin with Dr. Oetker Cake Release:

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. The cakes came out of the tin perfectly thanks to the Cake Release, and you can clearly see the rose shape - I was really pleased with these.

I had enough mixture for a second batch but had run out of Cake Release so instead I used Fry-Light. I thought a spray oil would work better than greasing the tin with butter as it would get in all the nooks and crannies. I also thought that using Fry-Light would probably be no different to Cake Release, but I was very wrong! Fry-Light is obviously an oil for cooking and you can see from the picture below how dark the cakes using Fry-Light came out. They still came out of the tin easily, but they cooked for the same length of time - of course, the oven would have been hotter for the second batch, but I think using oil instead of Cake Release meant they were overdone. I'll go back to using Cake Release in future!

Despite everyone thinking the darker cakes were chocolate, they went down well at work. I sprinkled the tops with edible red glitter for a little extra pizazz. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the inside as they were bright pink from the food colouring! The rosewater taste was quite subtle but I think definitely there, and the shape of the cakes was a real talking point.

There are several blog challenges this month that this recipe is perfect for. Firstly, Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel at Dollybakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme is l'amour. (That's love, for non-French speakers!)

Secondly, I'm sharing this with Cakeyboi for Treat Petite, as the theme is Valentine's treats for your loved ones.

Four Seasons Food is focusing on "food from the heart" this month so I think these mini rose cakes fit nicely with the theme. The challenge is hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg.

Finally a new challenge, Love Cake, hosted by Jibber Jabber. Rose-shaped cakes are certainly evocative of love and passion - the theme this month is baking with passion.