I took this Gin and Tonic Cake recipe and made amends in order to make this cake. I chose fresh raspberries over frozen as I wasn’t sure how the moisture would work with frozen ones. So if you do choose to make that choice rather than fresh, be warned I haven’t tried it. You may need to amend your cooking time to account for that if you do. I chose a really simple decoration of freeze dried raspberries as I knew I would be hand delivering the cake. But you could easily pipe decorative icing around the edge or decorate with fresh raspberries, or whatever takes your fancy.
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 250 g Salted butter
- 200 g Golden caster sugar
- 4 Eggs
- 250 g Self-raising flour sieved
- 75 g Natural yogurt or sour cream
- 150 g Raspberries (fresh)
- Zest of one lemon
For the Icing and Decoration
- 200 g Softened butter at room temperature
- 400 g Icing sugar sieved
- Juice of one lemon
- 2 tbsp Lemon curd
- Freeze dried raspberries
Instructions
- Make sure you zest your lemon first and set the zest aside, it will be hard to do this when you’ve juiced it! Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan. Grease and line 2 x 20cm cake tins.
- In a freestanding electric mixer, or using an electric whisk, beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, for around 5 mins. Add the eggs one by one, making sure they are fully incorporated before adding the next one. If the mixture looks like it might split, add a tablespoon of your flour, then fold in the rest of the flour. Mix the natural yogurt or sour cream into the cake mixture to make a thick and silky mixture, fold in the raspberries. Split the mixture between the cake tins and bake for 30-35 mins until a skewer comes out clean.
- Once the cake is out of the oven, allow to cool completely in the tin.
- To make the buttercream, beat the butter until soft, then add the icing sugar. Once fully incorporated, add the lemon juice, stir until fully incorporated.
- To assemble, place one of the cake layers on a cake board, cover with 1/3 of the buttercream and dollop on the lemon curd, spread this over the buttercream with a knife. Then sit the second cake layer on top. Cover this, too, in just a thin coat of icing then put the cake in the fridge for 30 mins to firm up – this will make it easier to get the rest of the icing on smoothly. Use the remaining buttercream to cover the top and sides of the cake. Add the decorations you wish to add, I shook over freeze dried raspberries for a more simple finish.
Everyone who’s tried my Lemon and Raspberry cake has really enjoyed it, so you must really give it a try. My other thought for changing this, is you could put raspberry jam in the middle instead of lemon curd. If you do give that a go, let me know how it works out.
