Raspberry and White Chocolate Cake
A vanilla sponge studded with whole raspberries, finished with white chocolate curls and a pour of melted white chocolate over each slice.
- Total
- 1 hr 10 min
- Prep
- 25 min
- Bake
- 45 min
- Serves
- 10
- Level
- Medium
- Tin
- 20 cm springform
Raspberries and white chocolate is a combination that can tip into sickly very quickly, because white chocolate is essentially sugar and cocoa butter with nothing bitter to hold it back.
Two things keep it honest here: soured cream in the batter, which gives the crumb a faint tang, and a pinch of salt in the chocolate pour. Neither is detectable on the plate. Both are the difference between a cake you finish and one you leave half of.
Fold the berries in five strokes and no more.
Ingredients
For the cake
For the white chocolate pour
To finish
You will need
- 20 cm springform tin
- Heatproof bowl
- Vegetable peeler
Method
Oven 175°C · fan 155°C · 345°F
Heat the oven and line the tin
Heat the oven to 175°C / 155°C fan. Butter a 20 cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper.
Cream and add the eggs
Beat the butter and sugar for 4 minutes until pale, then add the eggs one at a time, each with a spoonful of the flour.
Fold in the dry ingredients
Fold in the flour, baking powder and salt, then the soured cream and vanilla. The batter should be thick, because thick batter is what holds raspberries up.
Fold in the fruit and chocolate
Toss the raspberries in the extra tablespoon of flour, then fold them in with the chopped white chocolate using no more than five strokes. Every extra stroke breaks another berry and streaks the crumb pink.
Tip Cold raspberries straight from the fridge hold together far better than room-temperature ones.
Bake for 45 minutes
Bake for 45–50 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean. Cover with foil at 30 minutes if the top is colouring fast.
Release and cool
Cool 20 minutes in the tin, then unclip the ring and cool on the base until barely warm.
Melt the white chocolate pour
Warm the cream until it steams, take it off the heat, add the chopped white chocolate and the salt, and leave it for two minutes before stirring smooth. White chocolate seizes above 45°C, so keep it off direct heat entirely.
Top and serve
Drag a peeler along a bar of white chocolate to make curls. Scatter them and fresh raspberries over the cake, then pour the warm white chocolate over each slice.
Baker's notes
- The pinch of salt in the white chocolate pour is doing real work. Without it the whole thing is one-note sweet.
- Frozen raspberries make a much messier crumb than frozen blueberries do. If it is all you have, fold them in frozen and accept the streaks.
Keeping it 3 days in a tin. Refrigerate in hot weather, but bring it back to room temperature before serving or the white chocolate goes waxy.
Questions, answered
My white chocolate went thick and grainy. Why?
It got too hot, or a drop of water reached it. Take the cream off the heat before the chocolate goes in, and make sure the bowl and spoon are bone dry.
Can I use frozen raspberries?
You can, but do not thaw them, and expect pink streaks through the crumb. The flavour is fine; it just looks less tidy.
If it goes wrong
Three things account for most of what happens to a cake in a domestic oven. Each has its own guide.
- It sank in the middleSeven causes, told apart by the shape of the crater.
- It came out raw in the centreBrown outside, wet inside, and how to rescue the one you are holding.
- The caramel seizedIt is almost always fixable. The lump re-melts.
