Recipe | Raspberry ripple sponge cake

Easy to make, this summery treat may be the nicest cake I’ve ever had. And I don’t say that lightly: I’ve eaten A LOT of cake in my time 🙂

This week I’m continuing to fulfill my promise to make all the cakes which feature in my first novel, Art and Soul. One of the characters, Ronnie, owns a cake shop, and this raspberry ripple cake is just one of the delicious offerings her lucky customers can enjoy.

You can see the other cakes which feature in Art and Soul, including chocolate fudge and red velvet, here.

Ingredients:

250g butter or margarine
250g caster sugar
4 large eggs
250g self-raising flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g fresh raspberries

Method:

Make your raspberry purée. I pushed the raspberries through a sieve using the back of a spoon, letting the juice drip into a bowl below, but you could whiz the raspberries in a blender and then sieve afterwards. Set to one side.
Now make your sponge cakes. Grease and line two 8-inch, round cake tins. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, beating your mixture after adding each egg. Then add the vanilla extract and flour and stir until you have a smooth mixture.
Divide your mixture in two and spoon into the cake tins. Using the back of a spoon, make a number of wells in each tin but don’t go right to the bottom of the tin. Spoon your raspberry purée into these wells, as shown in the photos below. BUT make sure you keep 2 tablespoonfuls of purée to flavour the buttercream filling later.

Then use a knife or skewer to swirl the purée through the mixture. Like this:

Bake your cakes for about 30 minutes or until a knife or skewer inserted into the middle of a cake comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tins before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the filling I made a standard buttercream, making far too much as usual. 75 g of butter/marg and 150g icing sugar will be more than enough. Add two tablespoons of raspberry purée to your buttercream. If adding the liquid makes the buttercream too sloppy, add some extra icing sugar or put in the fridge to harden up.

You could cover your cakes with the buttercream if you want, but I think the top is too pretty to hide. I piped the buttercream between the laters.