Recipe | Raspberry and walnut loaf cake

A delicious loaf cake with a moist raspberry centre.

Yet another recipe from my Mum’s folder of clippings from various magazines. Unfortunately, there’s nothing on the cutting to say which magazine this came from – sorry! I made a couple of changes to the given method and was pleased with the results 🙂

Ingredients:

175 g / 6 oz butter and a little extra for greasing your tin
4 tbsp seedless raspberry jam (i.e. jelly jam)
175 g / 6 oz raspberries – you can use either fresh or frozen
150 g / 5.5 oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
150 g / 5.5 oz caster sugar
100 g / 4 oz ground almonds
50 g / 2 oz walnuts, roughly chopped
zest of 1 large lemon
3 eggs, lightly beaten
icing sugar for dusting.

Method:

Prepare a large loaf tin. Grease the inside with butter and line with greaseproof baking paper. If you can find them, you can use ready-shaped loaf tin liners.

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees C fan) / Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F.

Warm the jam until it’s smooth. You can do this in a pan, or by putting it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Gently stir the raspberries into the jam until they are coated.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the eggs, adding them one at a time and stirring until combined. Sift in the baking powder and flour. Add the ground almonds, lemon zest and most of the walnuts (leave about a quarter of them to sprinkle over the top of the cake). Stir all the ingredients together until combined.

Spoon half of the cake mixture into your loaf tin, making sure the bottom of the tin is covered.

Spoon about three quarters of your raspberry mixture onto this lower cake layer. Try to keep your layer of raspberries away from the sides of the cake to prevent “bleeding” during baking.

Carefully spoon the rest of the cake mixture around the sides of the raspberry layer and over the top. Sprinkle the remaining walnuts over the cake and bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch.

Leave to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Caution! It’s best to lift the cake out vertically, using the greaseproof paper to help you. If you have to tip the tin upside down be careful in case any boiling jam runs out and scalds you (not that this happened to me or anything…).

As you can see, the cake did dip in the middle. You might be able to counteract this by spooning extra mixture along the centre of the tin before putting the cake in the oven. Finally, spoon the remaining raspberry mixture over the cake and sprinkle with icing sugar to serve.

The cake is slightly gooey next to the inside layer of jam and fruit.

This final picture shows how much was left after the first serving, giving you an idea of how tasty this cake is!

The cake will keep for few days if stored in an airtight container and kept in a cool, dry place. I’d also recommend wrapping the end of the cake in clingfilm (aka plastic wrap) to stop it drying out.

And if you’re looking for other recipes featuring raspberries: