Raspberry and White Chocolate Cake

I always say that you’re never too old for a birthday cake and making one gives me the perfect excuse to be creative. For this particular cake I decided to delve into the freezer for inspiration. For most of the year we are fortunate enough to have a treasure trove of fruit from the garden in there. It’s picked and frozen at the peak of freshness and means that we always have an array of fruit at hand to use in the kitchen. We have strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, gooseberries, apples, damsons and plums, all of which we’ve grown ourselves.

This is how I made the cake:

Preheat the oven to 170°C
Grease and base line 2 x 16cm sponge cake tins
Measure out the weight of 3 eggs (in their shells) of butter, caster sugar and self-raising flour, plus the addition of a teaspoon of baking powder and a scant 2 tablespoons of milk
You will also need a few drops of pink food colouring and 60g of white chocolate chips
Break the eggs into a jug and beat them together lightly
Place all the ingredients into either a large roomy mixing bowl or a food mixer and then beat everything together well until the mixture is smooth and creamy in texture
Divide the cake mixture into two – colour one half pink and leave the other half plain
Put the mixture into the prepared tins and roughly smooth the surface of each
Sprinkle the white chocolate chips on top of the plain cake mixture

Bake the cakes for about 35-40 minutes, or until they are golden brown and spring back when pressed
Leave the cakes to cool in their tins before removing them

This is how I made the icing:

Grate 75g of white chocolate – set this aside as it will be used to sprinkle on the surface of the finished cake
Blitz 125g of fresh or frozen raspberries in a food blender until fairly smooth. Strain the fruit in a sieve, discarding the pulp and keeping the juice
Measure 350g of icing sugar and 200g of softened butter into a mixing bowl or food mixer and beat them together until smooth and creamy in texture
Add the raspberry juice to this mixture and mix it in until everything is well blended. The raspberry juice gives the icing a wonderfully vibrant colour

This is how I assembled the cake:

Level the surface of each cake with a sharp knife so that they are the same height and the tops are smooth
Cut each cake into concentric circles and interchange them so that they look like this:

sandwich the cakes together with some of the icing and use the rest of the icing to cover the top and sides of the cake
sprinkle grated white chocolate over the surface of the cake