A few weeks ago now we had a busy weekend- on Saturday Andy’s other brother was getting married (one got married nearly 2 years ago now) and after a big breakfast…
Yep, pancakes with cooked apple and some caramel sauce (leftover from my cake club cake)- I knew we would not have lunch so needed something filling.
We then drove there, changed, went to the wedding and generally had a fab time.
See how many weeks ago it was!
They had very cool giant cocktail glasses in each table filled with sweets (we were on the fudge table), plus a sweetie buffet (bar?) and so everyone had their own little paper bag to fill with sweets. My poor flower did not last well in the heat (this photo was taken on Sunday).
On Sunday we went out for breakfast, wandered around the shops for a bit before driving home, where we were then invited out for dinner, so I decided to make a cake- I can’t go somewhere without taking one and I had not baked so far that weekend!
I found a recipe in the Clandestine Cake Book, but changed it a bit.
Raspberry and White chocolate loaf
Preheat the oven to 180C and line a large loaf tin.
Mixing in the frozen raspberries
Ingredients:
125g butter
175g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g plain flour
50g ground almonds
3 level tsp baking powder
4 tbs milk (I used almond milk)
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g frozen raspberries
75g white chocolate
Optional- freeze dried raspberries/ raspberry powder
Directions:
Cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla.
Sift in the flour, then add the ground almonds and baking powder.
Stir in the milk, and then finally fold in the raspberries. Frozen ones should be quite resilient to a bit of stirring.
Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake for around 50-55 mins (the original recipe said 35-40 mins, but mine needed a lot longer than that)- until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tin.
While it cools, melt the white chocolate- I do this in the microwave and as long as you only cook it for 15 seconds at a time it is fine.
If you are using it, stir in the freeze dried raspberry powder, and then drizzle over the loaf.
I was sent some gorgeous dried raspberry powder from Zingology and this went perfectly in the white chocolate (they use a very unique process which uses light to extract the water molecules. This is a very gentle process that means that the nutrients, enzymes, colour and taste remain intact). I then sprinkled it with some freeze dried raspberries (Waitrose sell these in little tubes in their baking section).
This was all that was left after dinner!
The ground almonds made it super moist, and the raspberries burst a bit when the cake bakes and go all jammy. The sweet white chocolate balances the tart raspberries too.
Do you like baking with fruits? I love using frozen raspberries or blueberries- fresh ones can get all squashed when you mix them, whereas the frozen ones keep their shape until they are baked.