Weekend Cooking: Raspberry-flecked Sour Cream Cake

A few weeks ago now I posted a Nigella Lawson recipe that I got from Masterchef Australia of Walnut, Ginger and Carrot Cake. As a result of how delicious that cake was I thought I would take a look at some of her other recipes.

Nigella Lawson must be one of the most famous food names in the world. Whilst I obviously know who she is and have watched the occasional episode of her TV shows I wouldn't really call myself a fan. I certainly can't remember cooking any of her recipes before.

Having borrowed At My Table from the library, I took a leisurely look through all the recipes and found several that I am interested in making. I must say I really enjoyed reading the intros to each of her recipes. There are warnings to not even think of substituting light coconut milk for full cream coconut milk, or my favourite one which is the introduction to a Brussels Sprouts with Preserved Lemons and Pomegranate. The paragraph starts "There is a vociferous anti-sprout brigade, but I have no time for the Brussels bashing bigotry." As an anti-sprouter I laughed!

There's a number of recipes I want to try. Some of the recipes that I want to try are Chicken and Pea Tray Bake, and the Chocolate Olive Oil Mousse. There's also a White Chocolate Cheesecake that I am tempted to try so that I can compare it to the one that I have been making to great acclaim for several years.

My first recipe to try though was this one, mainly because I wanted to try out the freeze dried raspberries but also because it looks really pretty and not too difficult. In the intro to this recipe it advises that you shouldn't substitute fresh raspberries, and that if you don't have a savarin ring, which I don't, then you can make this in a 1lb (450g) loaf tin.

Raspberry-flecked Sour Cream Cake

175g plain flour
1/2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
175ml sour cream, room temperature
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tspn vanilla extract
125ml vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing the tin
2 x 15ml tbspns freeze-dried raspberries, plus more for sprinkling

Icing

125g icing sugar
1-2 x 15ml tbspns freshly boiled water

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan-forced. Grease your 22cm savarin ring generously with oil using a pastry brush., and leave the tin upside down over a piece of newspaper or baking parchment while you get on with making the cake batter. Or line a loaf tin.

Mix the flour, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl. Put the sour cream into a large measuring jug, add the caster sugar, eggs, vanilla and oil and whisk to mix.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and beat until you've got a smooth batter. Fold in the freeze-dried raspberries, then pour the mixture into the prepared mould (or loaf tin) and bake for 30-35 minutes (or 45-50 minutes if using a loaf tin) until the cake is risen and golden brown and a cake tester pronged into two parts of the cake comes out clean. Sit the cake in its tin on a wire rack until cool before turning out, easing it gently with a small spatula first.

Once the cake's completely cold, transfer to a cake stand or plate. Mix the icing sugar with the freshly boiled water, adding 1 tspn at a time, until you have a thick but still pourable consistency: around 4 teaspoons of water generally does it. Make sure there  are no lumps before you spoon it all over the top of the cake and sprinkle immediately with freeze dried raspberries.

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