The Best Saffron Milk Cake

This luxurious looking and tasting saffron milk cake is impressive and unique! The sweet floral flavour of saffron is infused into a light and airy cake sponge, which is then soaked with a saffron three milk mixture and topped with saffron whipped cream. You can make this dessert ahead of time and serve it cold, garnished with crunchy pistachios. Its beautiful golden colour and aroma will have you coming back for a second slice.

A Few Thoughts on Saffron

Ever since I perfected my Turkish style Trilece cake (which is topped with caramel and well worth trying), I have been obsessed with trying different milk cake flavours. Saffron was my immediate next experiment simply because I prefer to use it in desserts rather than savoury applications, and because of its beautiful golden colour.

Saffron is one of the most expensive spices on earth, due to its labour intensive harvesting process. It has a distinct aroma and a sweet floral flavour, and it will turn anything golden yellow. You don’t need too much of it, but using it properly is extremely important to extract as much flavour as possible.

How to Use Saffron: You must crush the saffron strands in a mortar and pestle until it turns into a fine powder. Using the strands as-is will not extract much flavour. Once crushed, it can then be bloomed in hot water or over ice cubes. In this recipe, I use milk to bloom it.

In this recipe, I used saffron to infused the sponge cake, the milk mixture for soaking, as well as the whipped cream. Through testing, this was the best way to ensure the saffron flavour was prominent, but also without being too overpowering.

What You Need for Saffron Milk Cake

There are three main components to this dish (the sponge cake, the milk mixture, and the whipped cream), but each component is fairly straight forward to make.

• Cake: The cake base is a simple light and fluffy sponge cake. The egg whites and yolks are whipped separately to ensure that the cake is as light as possible, and combined with sugar, vanilla, saffron infused milk and flour.

TIP: You may have noticed that there is no source of fat (apart from the egg yolks) in the cake. This is because this allows us to have a cake with lots of air pockets to soak up that delicious three milk mixture.

• The Three Milks: This to me is the magical trio of ingredients. Evaporated milk, condensed milk and whole milk combine to transform the light sponge cake. The whole milk is infused with saffron. If you prefer your desserts to not be very sweet, use less of the condensed milk. I like it with the whole amount but this is down to prefence.

• Whipped Cream: We need a 35% heavy cream in order to whip it up to the perfect fluffy, creamy consistency. The cream is slightly sweetened with powdered sugar and infused with saffron to get a yellow whipped cream.

Step By Step Process

Step 1: Bake the cake. Start by separating the egg whites and the egg yolks. To do this, crack the egg over a bowl and use each half of the shell to pass the yolk back and forth until the egg whites have separated and fallen into the bowl.

Whip the egg whites on medium to high speed, and once nice and foamy, add in a tiny bit of lemon juice. Continue beating the whites while you slowly add in some sugar until medium to stiff peaks form. It is so important that there is no trace of fat or grease in your mixer bowl. Otherwise, the egg whites will not whip up nice and fluffy.

Crush the saffron into a fine powder using a mortar and pestle. Then, place the milk in a small sauce pan on medium heat and add the saffron powder. Warm up the milk just until hot but not boiling, to infuse the saffron flavour.

In a separate bowl, the egg yolks are whipped with vanilla and sugar until thickened, pale and creamy. The saffron milk is then mixed in by hand until it is well combined.

Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt into the yolk mixture and lightly whisk until there are no more clumps of flour that can be seen. Next, combine the egg whites with the rest of the batter. The best way to do this is to add about 1/4 of the whipped egg whites to the batter. Fold it in then add the batter to the rest of the whipped egg whites and continue folding.

Folding in the egg whites allows us to keep as much of the air that we whipped into the egg whites as possible.

Be careful! Try not to over mix the batter at this stage. When flour is over mixed in a batter, the result can be a tough and dry cake. We definitely want to avoid that!

Pour the batter into an ungreased 9 by 13 inch baking pan (ideally glass). You will notice a lot of bubbles and air pockets in the batter – this is exactly what you’re looking for. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350F until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Step 2: Make the milk mixture. Start by adding more of the crushed saffron to the whole milk, then simply combine the evaporated milk, condensed milk and saffron whole milk together in a large measuring cup and mix until combined.

Once the cake is beautifully golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, you can remove it from the oven. Allow it to cool for just a few minutes, then poke holes all over with a fork. This allows for maximum absorption of the three milk mixture. You can also run your knife along the edges to release the cake, which makes it easier to cut it later.

Slowly pour over the three milk mixture, ensuring you go around the cake as evenly as possible. You may feel like there is too much liquid, but the cake will soak it all up. Reserve roughly 3/4 of a cup for serving, if desired. Next, cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour or overnight.

The cake can be made ahead up to this point. When ready to serve, you can whip the cream. For the best texture, ensure the whipping cream is nice and cold. Whip the cream with the powdered sugar and crushed saffron until soft peaks form. Spread the cream over the cooled cake with a spatula or the back of a spoon, and smooth it over the entire cake.

Garnish the cake with crushed pistachios and saffron strands if desired. Now you are ready to slice and serve!

How to Make Ahead and Storage Instructions

If you are making this for a gathering, the cake can be made and soaked the night before. The cake will continue to soak up the milk mixture and can stay in the fridge for up to 5 days, tightly sealed with plastic wrap. Its best to whip the cream before serving.

Once the cake is iced with the cream and served, leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to a week. It has never lasted more than a day at my home, though.

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