Rose Sponge with Earl Grey Steeped Raisins

Delicate. Light. So not for the chocolate lover.

Note to self: Ease up on watching YouTube foodie channels at bedtime. Really.

There is something to be said about the power of auto-suggestion when the mind is drifting. One late night, while watching the Feast of Fiction team featuring the Sorted chaps make Turkish Delight, I had an a-ha moment – What a cool way to get the offspring to cut their teeth on Narnia! What, indeed. I have gelatine! I have sugar! I think I’ll sub the rose water!

All fired up, the very next day I hastily purchased a bottle of rose essence.

And three weeks on, that a-ha moment has been extinguished. (So much for the Law of Attraction. Epic fail, Nat, epic fail. Refer to note to self).

Thus perhaps not very imaginatively (why let the rose essence languish), I thought of making a standard sponge cake, subbing the vanilla. And if that wasn’t messing with one’s mind enough, how about adding raisins, plumped up after a hot soak in Earl Grey tea.

You will need:

4 oz (approximately 120 g) unsalted butter

4 oz granulated sugar

4 oz self raising flour

2 eggs

2 oz raisins (soaked overnight in freshly brewed Earl Grey)

Rose essence

Red food coloring (optional)

Make it:

1. As always, start with pre-heating your oven to 180° C. I used a loaf tin (which was just the right size for the amount of batter) and gave it a liberal spraying of canola oil. (You could line it with baking paper of course)
2. Cream the butter and sugar together – usually it takes about 3 to 5 minutes to get it pale, light and fluffy (with elbow grease and cool weather conditions, that is).
3. Whisk in an egg at a time. Then add about half a teaspoon of rose essence.
4. Fold in your flour alternating with scoops of the drained raisins – switch to a spatula when it comes to folding in the flour. Remember to go easy on the batter; overmixing the batter (by beating it, or using a hand mixer on high) results in air tunnels ploughing their way through the cake due to uneven baking, and your cake will be chewy in a bad way).
5. Finally, for some visual drama, you could add some drops of red food coloring and aim for light pink. Bake the cake for 30 minutes.

For want of a better word, I thought this cake was cheerful. Rose and the bergamot undertones of the tannic Earl Grey worked well together.

Needless to say, this delicately flavored sponge goes well with a cup of tea, over discussions of the merits of rose-flavored candy, Tilda Swinton’s White Witch villainy, and which of the Pevensie children was the most annoying.