Fiona Cairns recipe: A summer garden cake

By Sarah Stephens 730AM GMT eighteen March 2010

A summer grassed area baked sweat bread Photo LAURA HYND

(Serves Eight)

Fiona Cairns"s beginner"s guide to baked sweat bread decorating Seaweed recipes the majority appropriate of fronds Easter 2009 The real... Roast leg of lamb Chocolate recipes Heston Blumenthal my new Alice in Wonderland menu Cooking with brownish-red sugarine

130g unsalted butter, softened, and some-more for the tin

20 immature cardamom pods

170g self-raising flour

100g white chocolate (ideally Swiss), chopped

130g white caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

for the ganache

100g white chocolate, finely chopped

100ml stand in cream

2 tsp rosewater

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas symbol 4. I have this baked sweat bread in a heart-shaped tin measuring 23cm at the widest point and 6.5cm deep, but differently have use of a 20cm diameter, 7.5cm deep, spin tin. Butter the tin well, afterwards line with baking parchment. Deseed the cardamom pods. Split and grub the seeds to a powder in a pestle and mortar. There might be a couple of pieces of scale churned in, so differentiate the cardamom powder together with the flour to remove them.

Place the chocolate in a food processor with half the sugar. Process until as excellent as possible. Take dual tablespoons of hot, not boiling, H2O and leave it until you can only drop in your finger. Dribble it in to the chocolate, estimate until majority has melted. Add the superfluous sugarine and the butter, cut in to knobs, and routine well. Add the eggs, flour and vanilla and brew again. Dont be concerned if there are little pieces of chocolate left in the batter.

Pour in to the tin and bake for 25-30 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Rest in the tin for a couple of minutes, afterwards spin out on to a handle rack, stealing the papers. Leave until positively cold.

Meanwhile, have the ganache. Place the chocolate in a play and, in a pan, move the thickk thickk cream and rosewater to the boil. Pour the thickk thickk cream over the chocolate, leave it for a couple of seconds, afterwards kindly stir until smooth. Leave until cold, chill slightly, afterwards drive until it thickens.

To decorate

100g shelled unsalted pistachios

200g Swiss white chocolate, finely chopped

200ml stand in cream

3 tsp rosewater

250g uninformed raspberries

40-50 total succulent flowering plants (any anniversary succulent flowering plants could be used I used cornflowers, pinks, nasturtiums, marigolds, borage and really small sunflowers)

Preheat the oven to 170C/gas symbol 3. Scatter the pistachios on a baking piece and fry in the oven for 5-10 minutes, jolt once and examination delicately to have certain they dont burn, afterwards remove and chop. Turn the baked sweat bread upside down and separate it in half. Spread the right away bottom half with a covering of the ganache, afterwards with the raspberries, and tip with the second covering of cake. Spread the tip and sides with the superfluous ganache. Press the roasted pistachios all around the side of the baked sweat bread and, when ready to serve, adorn the tip with the succulent flowering plants firmly packaged together.