Jasmin’s Raspberry & Lemon Summer Cake
By Homemade

(Serves 10)

Ingredients:
250g softened salted butter (you can use unsalted too, but then you will need to add a pinch of salt)
250g caster sugar
350g self raising flour
4 eggs
100ml milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
350g frozen raspberries (300g for the cake/50g for the raspberry glace icing)
Finely grated zest of 1 large lemon & the juice of the lemon
 
For the Lemon Buttercream
 
125g soft butter
200g icing sugar
Half of the lemon juice
 
For the Raspberry Glace Icing
 
50g raspberries
350g icing sugar
 
Method
1. Pre heat the oven to 170°c and line two 8inch sandwich cake tins.
2. Using an electric hand whisk, whip up the butter to a nice, smooth, rich looking consistency, then slowly whisk in the caster sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, milk & vanilla extract together and then set aside.
4. Meanwhile, back at the big bowl, using a sieve, add half of the flour, followed by half of the egg mixture, then mix with the hand whisk.
5. Do the same again with the remaining flour, then adding in the rest of the egg mixture until smooth.
6. Add the grated lemon zest and half of the lemon juice and whisk into the mixture.
7. Add 300g frozen raspberries and mix in gently with a wooden spoon.  You need to be very careful to avoid the raspberries mashing up into the mixture, you want them to remain whole.  You may find that the mixture is becoming much stiffer, that due to the temperature of the raspberries making the butter already in the mix harden up.  This is normal.
8. Distribute the mix evenly between the two baking tins, as the mixture will be harder you may need to spread it out with a palette knife or the back of a spoon. Then place in the oven to cook for approx 35mins. (This may vary depending on how powerful your fan oven is, so keep an eye on your cake)
9. Once cooked remove from the oven, leaving the cakes in the tins to cool down for a good hour.  I leave them in the tins as the raspberries will make the cake fragile when hot.
 
For the Lemon Buttercream Icing:
 
1. Whisk up the butter then using a sieve add the icing sugar and whisk to a smooth consistency. then add the remaining lemon juice and whisk up together.  This buttercream will be going into the centre of the cake as the sandwich filling.
 
For the Raspberry Glacé Icing:
 
1. Add a few drops of water to 5 raspberries in a bowl and place in the microwave for 1 minute, take out stir up and if not runny, then pop back in for 30 seconds.  That should do it.
 
If you don’t have a microwave, this can also be done in a saucepan on the hob. You just need these raspberries to be a lovely pink liquid.
 
2. Then sift the icing sugar into a bowl, slowly keep adding the raspberry liquid a few drops at a time until you get a nice thick glacé Icing, it needs to be slightly runny so that you can spread it on top of the cake, but not so runny it runs off the cake onto the plate.
3. This icing is spread on the top of the cake, then decorate the top with a few thawed Raspberries.