Cardamom Cake with Rose and White Chocolate Buttercream

Last week I introduced you to Lee Rosy's a wonderful tea shop in the back streets of Nottingham City Centre. It's one of our best kept secrets!

I also wrote about a cardamom cake that I had while I was there. I wasn't brave enough to go and ask for the recipe but I was pretty confidant I could put my own spin on the cake and come up with something delicious to treat my family to on a visit home.

The cake went down so well that my Mum has commissioned another cardamom cake for Easter, but the decoration is yet to be confirmed!

Last year I went for an Easter bunny, perhaps this year the cake won't be so kitsch!

Anyway...back to my cardamom cake!

For those of you who don't know, cardamom pods are a type of spice. Very aromatic in flavour it's almost like cooking with perfume! An interesting fact, is that green cardamom (the type you will see in the supermarkets) is one of the most expensive spices by weight!

They come in pod form (as I've mentioned you can buy them at the supermarket. Asda sell them in pots of 31g for just £1.24. For this recipe you will only use about a third of the pot so that's just an extra 40p for a delicious sponge cake!

Because it is so fragrant I didn't want anything to overpower the cake so I went for a sweet white chocolate buttercream with essence of rosewater to enhance the floral flavour of the cake!

Here's how you can make it at home:

As I've already mentioned I also topped this with a rose and white chocolate buttercream. I think the sweet floral flavour really balanced with the cake!

The buttercream is really simple to make:

I chose to colour a little of the butter cream pink just to give a bit more detail to the cake. I also topped mine with pink mini smarties and a light dusting of pink edible glitter! How will you decorate yours?

@Verygoodrecipes.com: Cardamom, Cake, Baking, Rose, White Chocolate, Buttercream