Persian Love Muffins Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the origin of the Persian love cake? ›

Once in Iran, the story becomes a legend stating that Persian love cake came about when a young Persian woman fell in love with a prince. To make him fall in love with her, she baked a cake infused with aromatic spices and rose water. To complicate matters further, many Iranians are not familiar with the cake.

Love cake is made from semolina, cashew nuts, pumpkin preserve, butter, eggs, sugar, and honey flavoured with rose water and a variety of spices, including cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamon, creating a fragrant, sweet, lightly spiced cake with a moist chewy inside and a crunchy exterior.

The ratio of wet to dry ingredients determines a cake's moisture level. If there's simply too much flour and not enough butter, a cake will taste dry. On the other hand, if there's too much milk and not enough flour, a cake will taste too wet. Finding the right balance between wet and dry ingredients is key.

Overmixing the batter is the most common cause for your cake to sink in the middle. Be sure to mix just until smooth, and allow it to cool completely!

Some say the cake was baked by Sri Lankan girls to win the hearts of Portuguese sailors. Another theory has it that the rich ingredients the cake demands - sugar, spices and butter - meant you would only ever make it for someone you loved dearly. It was called "bolo di amor", or "cake of love" by the Portuguese.

An Elvis Presley cake is a single-layer classic yellow cake that's topped with a pineapple glaze. Much like a poke cake, the syrup and juices of the pineapple will seep into the cake through fork holes, resulting in a decadent, ultra-moist cake.

Queen Elizabeth cake is a lightly sweet, moist, and low-fat date cake, topped with a brown sugar, butter and broiled coconut mixture. "Queen Elizabeth cake" is named after the Queen of Canada, Elizabeth II, and may have first been made in 1953 for her coronation.

Technically, funeral cake is a chocolate sheet cake with fudge icing and topped with crunchy pecans and big enough to feed a crowd—which you may recognize as Texas Sheet Cake.

Let me introduce you to the cake soak.

When you do this, the cake integrates moisture and flavor, and the sweetened liquid helps preserve the cake's freshness, so a slice can taste just as delicious a couple days after baking.

If you were to use exclusively oil, the cake would turn out much denser than you may have intended. If you're unsure, it's safest to use a 50/50 combination of butter and oil instead of replacing the butter completely.

Why does my cake become hard after baking? ›

2) Too much flour was used

If you use a cup rather than a scale there's a good chance you're using too much flour: up to 20% too much, if you use the measuring cup as a scoop then tamp the flour down. Any baked good — especially cake —with too much flour will be dry, hard, crumbly … take your unhappy pick.

Another story tells of a dim sum chef's wife creating a pastry with wintermelon paste influenced by a recipe from her mother's family. The new pastry was found to taste better than the dim sums that were being sold in teahouses, and the chef proudly told everyone it was made by his wife, hence it was named "Wife Cake".

The tradition of 'souling' and giving out Soul Cakes on All Soul's Day originated in Britain and Ireland hundreds of years ago, from giving out bread on All Souls' Day during the devout Middle Ages (see John Mirk below).

With Christianity's spread across Europe during medieval times, many existing traditions were adapted into Christian customs, including baking special cakes for Easter. The cross on hot cross buns came to represent Christ's crucifixion.

History. Sweet-scented osmanthus cake originated in China during the Ming Dynasty. Though its exact origin is unclear, folk tales have it that the poet Yang Shen dreamed of visiting the moon in order to take the imperial exam. In the dream, he saw a magnificent palace and a huge and sweet-smelling osmanthus plant.