Baking With Flowers

Last weekend my favorite hot mama, Nour Arida Badawi, was super sweet enough to come over for some pictures to feature me on her Instagram page N For Nour, and to get a taste of cake :p

I decided to make three different types of cake, ones that look really good in pictures!

Of course, i got super overwhelmed and decided to start baking the night before. I got into the kitchen, plugged my KitchenAid stand mixer, turned it on, and nothing happened. I WANTED TO CRY.

Thankfully, i have an old run down stand mixer that proved to be a trooper! Plugged it in and started cracking them eggs and sifting flour.

The first cake i did was an orange bundt cake. I usually use my grandmother’s recipe which always proves to be AMAZING. However this time, i wanted to try a new recipe.

The orange cake smelled divine, however upon flipping it out of the pan, some parts got stuck to the bundt tin and i wanted to cry, again. So i decided to decorate it, massively, with my dried rose buds and it looked pretty awesome! I won’t share with you this recipe as i totally prefer the one from my grandma. Will dedicate a post just for it <3

The second cake i did was Lavender Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting, the star of the show! YUMM!

These cupcakes are divine, i cannot even begin to explain!

Recipe:

Ingredients

1/2 cup whole milk
1 Tbsp dried edible lavender
1 1/3 cups (158 g) cake flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp granulated sugar
3 Tbsp honey
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor combine milk and lavender and pulse about 1 – 1 1/2 minutes until lavender is well chopped, scrapping down inside of processor once during processing. Pour into liquid measuring cup (be sure to scrape out all of milk and lavender from sides and lid), set aside and allow to rest.
In a mixing bowl whisk together cake flour, baking powder and salt for 30 seconds, set aside. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, whip butter and sugar on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Blend in honey. Add eggs one at a time and mix just until combined after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Working in 3 separate batches beginning and ending with flour mixture, add dry ingredients alternating with milk mixture, mixing just until combined after each addition. Fill paper lined muffin cups 2/3 full and bake in preheated oven 19 – 21 minutes, until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Allow to cool several minutes in muffin tin before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Cool completely then frost with Vanilla Bean Frosting. Store in an airtight container.

You can also find the recipe here: http://bit.ly/1VPCYuN

I didn’t use the frosting in the recipe above, i made the same buttercream frosting i made before http://bit.ly/1NOjdLE its delicious and it is super easy to work with!

The third cake i made was the two layered vanilla cake filled with vanilla frosting, covered with a rose buttercream frosting, and topped with chocolate ganache.

I made the HORRIBLE mistake of adding MUCH more than two drops of rose water into the frosting mixture which led to it giving off an extremely bitter aftertaste 🙁

However it looked pretty awesome and if you try to disregard the bitterness, it tastes pretty awesome as well!

The vanilla cake and frosting recipes can be found here http://bit.ly/1NOjdLE

Nour and I had so much fun taking pictures and trying not to devour all the cakes at once!

Check out the pictures below 🙂