Perfume Cakes: Black Saffron

A cake inspired by the notes of Byredo's Black Saffron.

Hi everyone! In addition to my Cinema Cakes series, I am also beginning a Perfume Cakes as well! As an avid fragrance collector, I felt this was a fun way to combine a few of my favorite hobbies into one: recommending fragrances through baking! For my first installment (well, second, if you count my Nosferatu Cake) I’ve selected Black Saffron by Byredo.

Byredo is a boutique fragrance house out of Stockholm, Sweden specializing in musky skin scents and evocative imagery. Byredo has expanded their merchandise to other self care and makeup offerings, but their fragrance lines remains their most notable piece of production.

I have a few fragrances from Byredo, Black Saffron being my favorite (and the one I overdrew my bank account to purchase in New York City several winters ago). The scent is rich, dark, and leathery, with a fruity, woodsy dry down. Black Saffron is classified as a unisex scent, but I feel the fruit and florals do pull it a bit towards the feminine side. The projection is moderate and longevity is outstanding. This is a fabulous evening scent, one I save for nights out or cloudy days. While I would categorize this more a winter fragrance, a summer midnight lightning storm is a perfect comparison,

When planning on how to “cake-ify” this perfume, I started where every logical person would: the notes.

The notes for Byredo’s Black Saffron are as follows:

Top: Saffron, Juniper Berries, Pomelo

Heart: Black Violet, Rose, Leather

Base: Raspberry, Blonde Woods, Vetiver

In looking at these notes, there is a very clear divide between ‘edibles’ and ‘inedibles.’ Edible notes are very easy to incorporate; the challenge resides in the latter.

For the edible notes we have saffron, juniper, pomelo, raspberry, violet, and rose. For inedible, we have leather, blonde woods, and vetiver. When looking at these inedible notes, I try to ascertain what essence their involvement adds to the finished product (depth, smoothness, earthiness, etc) and find an edible alternative. To capture the toasty smoothness of leather I’ve chosen to add brown butter, and to replicate the woodiness of the blond woods and vetiver, I’ve incorporated thyme.

This brings me to my final cake: a fluffy, brown butter, saffron-infused sponge, dotted with fresh and jammed raspberries, filled with a coulis of raspberry, pomelo juice, juniper extract, and thyme, and frosted in a brown butter American buttercream enhanced with both violet and rose extracts. Because of the moisture from the added fruit and coulis in the cake itself, a cake soak was unnecessary in this case.

The final cake is sweet, fragrant, and complex, decorated in frosting dyed naturally purple to represent the saffron crocus. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and I look forward to seeing you in the next Perfume Cake installment! If you are interested, I have just begun a Cinema Cakes series as well, the first of which is based on Practical Magic. Happy baking <3

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