rose & pistachio drizzle cake | a recipe.

Can I just start with a recognition of how bad my food photography is. I can't do it. I have tried. It doesn't help that I live in the darkest flat in London - I used to live in a basement flat and even that had more natural light. It also doesn't help that I make ugly food. Usually edible, but incredibly ugly. 

But moving on, I am so excited that Bake Off is back. I'm not sure why I like it so much, it has none of the components of a TV show I like but every Wednesday evening I'm there. I find the first episode pretty irritating each time it comes on, I hate not being able to work out everyone's names because they don't get enough time on screen - not that I'll end up picking a favourite as I'm usually always wrong and anyway, who could beat this guy? This week for Bake Along, we had the choice between a drizzle cake, jaffa cakes or a mirror glaze cake.

Jaffa cakes were straight out for me, the thought of a homemade jaffa cake makes me want to gag - they are something that should only be made in factory, otherwise there is just too much orange and too much jelly and bleugh. Do I have the patience to make a mirror glaze cake? I very much doubt it. But do I love a drizzle cake? Yep. A lemon drizzle is one of my go to bakes, something I probably make once a month. So why not mix it up a little for Bake Along? 

So this week I made a rose and pistachio drizzle cake. Was it my best? No. Does it look drizzley enough? No. Did I go over the top with the icing? Yep. Does it taste pretty awesome? Yep. So that'll have to do, along with a memo to myself to try harder next week!

I used this recipe here for the cake, but replaced the orange zest with vanilla. When the cake was cooling, I mixed together some icing sugar and water over heat with a bit of rosewater and then spooned the mixture over the cake. Once it was cool, I spooned over some pink rose icing and topped with crushed pistachios.