Ginger Rose Bundt Cake with Rose Water Icing

It’s Mother’s Day soon! No better way to show your love than to bake something for your dearest mom, am I right? I have just the recipe for you….this delightful Ginger Rose Cake with Rose Water Icing!

I would love to say that when I thought of making this recipe that I was thinking of Mother’s Day and making this cake for my own mom and that we would sit and have tea and a slice of cake together and it would just be this magical day.
Yeah…..no, that’s not at all how this all went down. Sorry mom!
I did have tea in mind though!
I have to be honest, this recipe is perfect for Mother’s Day and you should totally make this for your mom but at the time I just was thinking of the perfect cake recipe that I could pair with a flavorable cup of tea! Then I realized maybe three days before I was going to make this cake that we were so close to Mother’s Day and I got super excited because I knew this would be the perfect recipe for this very holiday. Don’t you just love when the stars align in your favor?

A company called Tea Runners contacted me and offered to let me have one of their delicious tea boxes for sample. I was actually really thrilled about the prospect of getting this tea because not only have I loved tea since I was a little girl; one of the my best memories with my mom was having afternoon tea and watching BBC English romance films together, but essential oils and tea also pair amazingly well together. You can easily add a drop of bergamot, peppermint or lemon essential oil to your morning cup of tea.

The box they sent me was the original box and I loved all the teas inside. Each package has a little description of the individual tea, the origin of the tea and steeping instructions. Many of their teas are award winning and it doesn’t surprise me because all the teas they sent me were delicious. I ended steeping a cup of the Golden Mao Feng for the photo shoot and sat down afterwards with a cup and a piece of cake. Yum! But if you love tea like I do you should definitely check them out online and get yourself a box.

They won’t disappoint!

Now, lets get back to the cake shall we??
I have never been a big fan of decorating cakes, I always end up making a big mess. Bundt cakes are my go to cake because they are already beautifully shaped and all you need is a simple glaze and a sprinkle of edible flare! So simple!
I knew right away that I wanted to make a bundt cake but I was wracking my brain for like a week trying to figure out the ideal flavor profile. Isn’t funny how you can agonize over a problem for the longest time and then someone who has absolutely no invested interest in the problem can come along and just provide the answer! So frustrating. Anyway, that is what happened to me. I told a friend about my predicament and they immediately were like, “Why don’t you do Ginger Rose?” I was like, yes, I really like this idea!

Thank you non-invested friend!

I knew that I wanted to use the doTERRA ginger essential oil for the ginger flavor. I mean, you would be foolish not to! Ginger is one of those oils I absolutely love to use for my recipes because putting a few drops in a recipe is a hell of a lot easier than chopping up a ton of ginger! And in this day and age, anything to make my life easier is okay with me.
It can be tricky to always know how much of the essential oil to add to a recipe, especially a baked good. My original thought was to make mini bundt cakes, I thought they would be adorable in the kind of setting I was going for. What a major fail that was….I used one of those weird silicone pans and the cake turns out all white and pale plus, the were a little dry, so starting over was my only option.
The benefit of the first fail was that I had only added two drops of the ginger essential oil to the batter, I thought that was enough because the cake batter tasted really strong of ginger. By the time it was baked though the ginger was like gone, kaput, missing! Making the new batch gave me a chance to add more ginger and get the flavor to really shine through.
Second time around? Big bundt pan you are my friend! Small silicone bundt pan…… not so much. Adding more ginger than before? Yes. Success and happy taste buds.

Drizzled on top is a rose water icing and it definitely is what makes the cake, you cannot forgo it. I played around with the idea at first with using the doTERRA rose essential oil which is without a doubt heavenly but its a little more pricey compared to most of the oils, so I came to the conclusion that you could use rose water instead. It turned out beautifully! If you have one of the rose essential oils just laying around by all means give it a try and tell me how it turned out! I would love to know.
If you really want the icing to permeate the cake then you can poke small holes all around the top of the cake before you add the icing, that way the icing will seep down inside the cake
…. or do what I do and add an extra drizzle after you have cut yourself a piece!
Garnish with some chopped candied ginger and rose petals and you are good to go! Invite your mom over this weekend, bake her this cake, sit down with a nice cup of tea and just enjoy your Sunday afternoon together.
Happy Mother’s Day!