Hey folks,

Hope you’ve had a lovely weekend? I’ve spent most of mine out and about, enjoying the sunshine warmth, meeting friends, lunching, dinnering and sipping on coffees. It’s been great. I also popped into the gym earlier on after months and months of neglecting my membership, so uh, perhaps the calories I’ve devoured these past 48 hours will balance out. Maybe. (Who am I kidding?)

I’m also super duper excited to spend the rest of this evening watching the Euro ’16 final with Mr Man and a pizza. What a great weekend!

Anyway, let’s focus on this week’s recipe. Boy – are you guys in for a treat today!

Raspberry cream cake.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. This isn’t the first time I’d made this cake. I baked and decorated it exactly like this a few weeks ago, but, I looked at the pictures I’d taken and decided the icing looked terrible and that the pictures were rubbish and in short, I was too embarrassed to share. So, I did it all over again.

The pics are still not quite right and I’m still not 100% happy with the icing cake v2, but I don’t want to hold out on you guys any longer!

Believe me when I say, you need this cake in your lives!

Imperfections aside, this cake is absolutely delicious, and you should endeavour to find an excuse to make it ASAP!

Four layers of moist buttermilk vanilla sponge, sandwiched together with a zingy raspberry mascarpone whipped cream, decorated with pink rose frosting and little meringue drops.

Fresh, light and packed with raspberry goodness. Perfect for a summer gettogether.

Yum!

Enjoy!

-Kay

Ingredients

Cake

• 330g plain flour
• 400g caster sugar
• 220g salted butter, room temperature
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 240ml buttermilk
• 4 eggs
• 3 tsp vanilla extract

Raspberry cream frosting

• 800ml double cream
• 200g mascarpone
• 135g icing sugar (may vary depending on how tart your berries are / personal preferences)
• 500g raspberries – I used fresh ones because they’re in season but you can use frozen ones brought up to room temperature
• Meringue drops (optional)

Instructions

1. Grease and line two 7 inch baking tins. Preheat your oven to gas mark 5.
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add vanilla extract, and whisk.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, whisking between each addition.
5. In a separate bowl, sieve flour and baking soda, mix to combine.
6. Measure buttermilk in a jug.
7. Add a third of the sieved flour mix to the butter and sugar, whisk to combine. Then add half of the buttermilk and whisk to combine.
8. Repeat till you’ve mixed all the ingredients.
9. Add a quarter of the mixture to each tin before baking for 20mins or until a cake tester comes out clean.
10. Turn out onto a cooling rack.
11. Repeat with the remaining batter so you have four layers.
12. Cover the individual layers with clingfilm and place in the fridge to chill. (It’s a lot easier to assemble when cold.)
13. Whilst the cakes bake, blitz the raspberries in a blender before sieving out the seeds into a saucepan. Place on a medium-low heat and simmer down till around half of the initial volume. Pour into a small bowl and place in the fridge to cool down.
14. To make the raspberry whipped cream, sieve the icing sugar into the double cream in a large bowl, and whisk until bubbly.
15. In another bowl, add the cooled raspberry reduction and the mascarpone, whisk until combined before adding to the whipped cream and icing sugar and then whisk until thick.
16. To assemble, smear the cake board with a little frosting before placing the first layer of cake on.
17. Top with some frosting and spread evenly with a palette knife before repeating with other layers.
18. Cover sides and top of cake with frosting and smoothen out with a cake scraper.
19. For the roses, split the remaining frosting into four small bowls. Leave one as is, and add varying quantities of pink food colouring to the other bowls. Mix to combine before piping on roses with a piping bag and nozzle and a decorative border on the bottom.
20. Finally, top with little meringue dots in any gaps.