• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

www.WeekendBakery.com

Weekend Bakery

The place for the ambitious home baker

  • Home
  • Webshop
    • Rijsmandjes
    • Brood bakken
      • Mixen & Mengen
      • Snijden, rollen, schrapen
      • Rijzen & Bakken
    • Broodbak sets
    • Uitstekers
      • Uitsteker sets
      • Speciale XL uitstekers
      • Dieren
      • Bloemen en planten
      • Transport
      • Vormen
      • Lente & zomer
      • Kerst & Feest
      • Halloween
      • Overig
    • Zoet bakken
      • Baking Love
      • Bakgereedschap
      • Papieren bakvormen
      • Bakvormen
      • Speculaasvormen en koekstempels
      • In de keuken
      • Serveren
      • Houten lepels, spatels, schepjes…
  • Recipes
    • Best bread recipes
    • Sweet baking
    • Nederlandse recepten
    • Bread baking tips
    • Bread movies
    • WKB projects
    • Article index
  • Info
    • Contact Us
    • Baking Conversion Tools
    • Why Home Baking
    • Baking Glossary
    • Article Index
    • Bread Scoring with the Lame / Brood insnijden met de Lame
    • Send Us Your Loaf
    • Your Loaves!
  • About us
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Sweet baking / Pink cakes craze

Pink cakes craze

18 Comments Sweet baking cakes, Dutch

The ‘roze koek’ is a much loved and eaten Dutch cake with a thick layer of pink fondant or icing.

Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie
My family cannot get enough of these pink cakes. The beauty of making your own is you get to put in what you like, and leave out what you don’t. The supermarket version of these cakes, famous and equally loved and hated in all of Holland, does not taste of real butter, vanilla, lemon or raspberries. This easy homemade version does! Provided you use the best and freshest ingredients, real vanilla extract, zest from organic lemons, fresh dairy butter and raspberries.

We have been baking these cakes for some time now, from the time the pink cakes baking virus swept over the country and everybody started baking them. This recipe gives you the easiest version to make, great baking fun with kids too. Just like the famous Dutch ‘rondo’, which we also love to bake, these homemade pink cakes are the real deal and there really is no going back.

There is no raising agent in this cake, just eggs, and the trick is to get them not to dome so the flat surface can be easily coated with a smooth layer of pink. You can also fill the cakes with a dollop of raspberry jam or you can add a fresh raspberry inside to create a nice raspberry surprise when you bite into one.

Happy baking!


IMG_5830

Ingredients for the cake batter

makes 12

165 g pastry flour or all purpose flour / plain flour

150 g butter at room temperature

150 g sugar

pinch of salt

3 eggs (165 grams)

zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients for the pink glaze

120 g icing sugar, sifted

10 fresh raspberries

15 ml / 1 tbsp lemon juice

water if needed

Making the pink cakes
The batter
Preheat your oven at 170 ºC / 340 ºF conventional setting. Grease a muffin tin (for twelve normal size muffins) with melted butter or pan coating. Combine butter and sugar and beat with a hand mixer for one minute until creamy. Add the eggs, one by one until incorporated. Add the lemon zest and vanilla extract and beat for one extra minute. Add sifted flour and salt to the mixture and combine until you have a smooth batter.

Divide the batter equally over the twelve muffin cups. Place muffin tin in the middle of the preheated oven and (this is important) cover the tin with a metal baking sheet. This sheet will prevent the batter from rising too quick. This way they stay nice and even on the surface and can be coated with a smooth pink surface.

After 10 minutes, remove the baking sheet and reduce the oven temperature to 160 ºC / 320 ºF. Bake for 7 minutes more, until light golden brown, then take from the oven. Leave to cool for about 5 minutes before removing them from the tin. Then leave to cool completely before applying the pink glaze.

The pink glaze

Using a sieve and the back of a spoon, squeeze the raspberries to get the essence of the fruit and leave the seeds behind. Mix the fruit puree with the lemon juice, add the sifted icing sugar and combine until you have a very thick paste that is almost not runny.

If necessary you can add some water to reach the right consistency. Apply an even layer of pink frosting on each cake and leave to dry.

Sweet baking cakes, Dutch

Reader Interactions

Share Your Comments & Feedback Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please read our comment policy below before submitting your comment:

  • Only comment or ask a question about a recipe as shown on our website
  • We love to help you, but unfortunately we cannot answer every question personally

Comments

  1. Ola says

    September 29, 2024 at 23:33

    Hello,

    I followed this recipe but it didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. I expected the batter to turn out dense, much like a Swedish “mazarin”:
    sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/…_(bakverk)

    This turned more into a muffin batter and so I wonder, are there 2 different schools of doing this? When googling images of roze koek, I find some are more muffin-esque, like this recipe, while others are more dense.
    The one I was hoping to recreate is Albert Heijn’s roze koek.

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      September 30, 2024 at 08:22

      Hello Ola,
      Thank you for your comment. You could be right about the cakes being different. This cake batter has eggs in it and for it to stay dense not too much air should be beaten into it and because of the inhibiting of the rising of the batter, it should come out denser than normal cake batter too. For us it comes out more compact than ‘normal’ cake or muffin crumb, but maybe the mazarin recipe (we have not tried this)or another recipe comes closer to the store bought version (which of course contains no butter but palm oil, among many other ingredients a home baker would not normally use, so that makes it a bit of a challenge).

      We hope you will find the right recipe and will come close to your perfect roze koek!

      Reply
      • Ola says

        September 30, 2024 at 12:43

        Thank you for the reply!
        I’ll try to give it a go – appreciate your detailed answer.

        Reply
  2. TLW says

    September 22, 2019 at 16:04

    I want to do these for our ‘wear it pink’ fundraiser. Are the cakes ok for freezing as I would like to get a load ready the week before then put the frosting on on the day.

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      September 28, 2019 at 19:26

      Hello TLW,
      We think it’s a very good idea to bake the cakes ahead and freeze and do the frosting on the day. We would however always recommend doing a trial run with a small batch to avoid disappointment on the day, because we can never fully judge the outcome of different ingredients and appliances and hands.

      Hope it will be a great event!

      Reply
      • Tracy says

        October 15, 2019 at 12:15

        Thank you 🙏

        Reply
  3. J G says

    September 13, 2019 at 19:46

    Recently I was diagnosed Celiac and I miss these cakes sooo much. Do you have a gluten free flour you recommend? I live in the US

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      September 20, 2019 at 09:09

      Hello JG,
      Very sorry to hear about your condition. We have never made a gluten free version of the cakes, it is not our field of expertise, but we would start with almond flour at least being part of it, maybe combined with a gluten free cake flour that is usually a combination of things like rice, tapioca and other flours to get a good result. We hope you will be able to taste a great pink cake soon!

      Reply
  4. Hugo says

    May 21, 2017 at 16:32

    Hi Guys,

    Compliments for awesome site.

    Question or actually a comment; you keep ‘pushing’ for using metric system and that is very good in my opinion as well, but you mention like 3 eggs but not the size or the weight.
    Egg weights can easily vary from 45 to 70 gram depending on size number.
    So I would suggest in recipe eggs also in metric net weight.

    Thank you.
    Hugo

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      May 21, 2017 at 17:39

      Hi Hugo,
      Thank you for your comment. You are very right of course. Egg is always the most challenging because of the container it comes in and the consistency and indeed they vary a lot in size. We have updated the recipe with the egg weight.

      Happy baking,

      Marieke

      Reply
  5. Edie says

    February 8, 2017 at 23:14

    Hi, the Dutch recipe for Roze Koek requires Bloem (all purpose flour) and the English recipe requires Cake Flour. Aren’t those very different?
    I am Dutch, living in San Francisco and always very confused about all the different flours in the US and the Netherlands. For instance, self rising flour here seems very different than in the Nl. it tends to be very salty here.

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      February 9, 2017 at 09:19

      Hi Edie,
      Yes you are right and very right for pointing it out. Cake flour is a confusing term and can mean different things in different countries and can contain things like corn flour or maybe other ingredients or additives. You could use it for this recipe probably, but the main point is there should be no raising agent in the flour. In Holland cake flour (cakemeel) definitely contains baking powder.
      So what we use for this recipe is fine white ‘patent’ flour and in the English version we should advice to use pastry flour or all purpose / plain flour as an equivalent.

      Thank you and enjoy your baking in SF!

      Reply
      • Edie says

        February 9, 2017 at 20:54

        Thanks for your quick answer, bedankt!

        Reply
  6. Willy Bulters-Dutcher says

    March 12, 2016 at 19:22

    wish it was in tsp. and tbsp. and cups

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      March 16, 2016 at 22:06

      Because we consider baking to be an exact science and because measuring can lead to deviations of 10% or more we always advice to use scales and weigh ingredients to get good results with our recipes.
      We do have a baking conversion page that you can consult for all the important ingredients:
      www.weekendbakery.com/cooki…nversions/

      Reply
  7. patricia says

    June 15, 2015 at 15:28

    Hello,can I use flour Type 45 for this recipe? I live in France and don’t know what kind of flour to use for cake flour?

    Thanking you

    patricia

    Reply
    • Weekend Bakers says

      June 17, 2015 at 08:30

      Hello Patricia,
      Yes you certainly can. We also have used Type 45 for this recipe and it is quite perfect for it.

      Happy baking!

      Marieke

      Reply
  8. Tom Windsor says

    February 27, 2015 at 10:44

    This looks great, I will definitely try this. It seems like a great recipe that avoids the “fake” taste of places like Dunkin’ Donut, their donuts were so fake tasting, it wasn’t good. I love how the icing is coloured by raspberries, I must try these!

    Reply

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Best bread recipes
  • Bread baking tips
  • Bread movies
  • Highlights
  • Holiday Baking
  • Nederlandse recepten & tips
  • Popular Recipes
  • Seasonal Favorites
  • Sweet baking
  • Uncategorized
  • WKB projects

Info

  • About Us
  • Article Index
  • Baking Conversion Tools
  • Baking Glossary
  • Bread Scoring with the Lame / Brood insnijden met de Lame
  • Contact Us
  • Send Us Your Loaf
  • Why Home Baking
  • Your loaves ’24 -’25
  • Your Loaves More 1 !
  • Your Loaves More 2 !
  • Your Loaves More 3 !
  • Your Loaves More 4 !
  • Your Loaves!

Seasonal Favorites

Ficelle with sourdough

Kouign-amann: Breton pastry with a hint of salty caramel!

Our version of Tartine style bread

Favorite flatbreads: Sourdough pita

San Francisco style sourdough bread

3 stage 70% Rye Bread with Raisins

Footer

Recent Articles

  • Our Sourdough Pizza Recipe
  • Wonderful Walnut Caramel Pie – The 2.0 Version
  • Fantastische Walnoten Karameltaart: Versie 2.0
  • Ons Zuurdesem Pizza Recept: Veel Smaak en Perfecte Bite!
  • Handy sourdough tips
  • Easter Raisin Buns with Pistachio filling
  • Making Pistache Paste
  • Het Panettone Project
  • The Joy of Baking – And how to find it!
  • Bakkersdozijn: Onze 12 plus 1 beste broodbak-tips!

Tags

almonds apples banneton boule Bread bread baking tips brioche butter cakes cheese chocolate christmas cinnamon Coffee Cookies couche cranberries crusty bread Dutch flatbread focaccia Holiday baking honey hybrid method Laminated dough lemon muesli muffins no knead pain rustique Patisserie pie pies & tarts pizza poolish preferment rye rye bread scones sourdough stretch&fold vanilla Viennoiserie walnuts yeast

Follow us on Social Media

  • Bluesky
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube

Favorites

  • De Zandhaas – Our local flour mill
  • The Fresh Loaf
  • The Perfect Loaf

All photos and text Copyright 2005-2025 by weekendbakery.com