Soaked Cakes

For some reason lately I've been thinking of soaked cakes. Not the naughty ones but the halal ones. I made a rose syrup one once using a rose 'pan'. I found some on the web and thought to share them. Do you ever make soaked cakes? Which one have you made and which ones would you recommend?

Candy cane cake.

Lemon yogurt cake soaked in Lemon Mint Syrup.

Halal Trini Black Cake (this one is called halal because it doesn't contain any alcohol unlike the traditional version which has tons. )

There's no more proper link for the rose cake so here is the full recipe. Would make a lovely eid cake.


Rose Scented Pound Cake


For the Cake:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter -- (2 sticks) at room
temperature
2 cups sugar
3 eggs -- at room temperature
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons rose water

For the Grapefruit-Rose Syrup:
1/4 cup freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
4 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon rose water

For the Glaze:
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup grapefruit juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon rosewater

For the Cake:
1. Preheat oven to 325� F. Grease and flour a 2 - 2 � quart Bundt pan.
2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer until it is fluffy and light in colour. Add sugar, 1 cup at a time and cream together thoroughly.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time to the butter/sugar mixture and incorporate thoroughly.
5. Pour the buttermilk into a liquid measuring cup and add the lemon juice and the rosewater. Stir to combine.
6. Add half of the dry flour mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and mix gently to combine. Then repeat by incorporating half the buttermilk mixture into the batter. Repeat until both the dry mixture and buttermilk mixture have been completely combined into the batter.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan and bake for 50-60 minutes. Insert a toothpick or a wooden skewer into the center of the cake and if it emerges perfectly clean, the cake is done. While the cake bakes, make the grapefruit-rose syrup.
8. Remove the cake from the oven and set aside on a rack to cool for 5 minutes. Poke between 50-100 holes into the cake with a wooden skewer while it is still warm in the pan and pour the grapefruit-rose syrup into the holes to fill and moisten the cake. Let stand for 1 hour before removing the cake from the pan.
9. To unmold, carefully loosen the edges of the cake from the pan and gently turn over with your hand supporting the cake as it glides out of the pan. Let it rest upright on a wire rack with a foil-lined cookie sheet underneath to catch any of the drippings from the syrup/glaze. (OR cover the cooling rack with waxed paper so that the cake doesn't stick to the cooling rack. then transfer the cake and wax paper to the serving platter and trim the wax paper so you can't see it)
10. Make the glaze and brush it into the crevices of the cake (if you are using a Rose Bundt pan) or simply pour it over the top edges of a standard Bundt cake. Let the glaze harden and then cover the cake until ready to serve.

For the Grapefruit-Rose Syrup:
1. In a small saucepan, combine the grapefruit juice, sugar and rosewater and heat to dissolve the sugar. Do not bring to a boil. Pour into cake (see above).

For the Glaze:
1. Sift confectioner's sugar into a medium-sized bowl (to ensure no lumps) and then whisk in grapefruit juice, lemon juice and rosewater and mix thoroughly to form a glaze. Brush or pour over cake (see above).