This week was my best mother´s best friend’s birthday and as we celebrated it yesterday, she asked me to bake a cake without chocolate but fruits instead. It should be a light cake since spring has come and you can’t really eat chocolaty treats when it’s so hot, right? So I went through all of my cookbooks to find the perfect cake and finally found this one in Annie Bell’s ‘Gorgeous Cakes’.
It’s a cake containing three layers, a mascarpone filling and an icing. The layers became fluffy, even though I used 5 eggs instead of 6. What I liked about this recipe is that the mascarpone filling isn’t too sweet. It consists of only 25g sugar because the raspberries are sweet enough to give the mixture the perfect sweetness. Sometimes if you add too much sugar to a cream which contains fruits, it loses its fruity taste. The sour sweet orange and sugar icing matches perfect with the fruity cake. For those who are allergic to gluten: this cake is gluten-free! The sponge only contains ground almonds, sugar, eggs and baking powder!
Enjoy (:
Raspberry Mascarpone Layer Cake
Cake:
- 6 medium eggs, separated (I used 5 eggs)
- 250g caster sugar (I used less)
- 350g ground almonds
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, sifted (It is very important to sift the baking powder beacause either it can’t be well incorporated because it forms little clumps which don’t taste good in a cake!)
Filling:
- 250g mascarpone
- 25g icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for dusting
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used bourbon vanilla powder)
- 250g raspberries, coarsely mashed, pllus handful of whole ones to decorate
Icing:
- 150g icing sugar, sieved
- 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice, sieved
- Pink food colouring, paste or liquid (I didn’t add this because I liked the natural colour of the cake and I actually always try to keep the cake as naturally as possible by not adding any foud colouring chamical extracts.)
Preparation:
- To prepare the sponges, preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/gas mark 6 and butter two 23cm sandwich or deep cake thins with a removeable base (I didn’t butter them but I cover the base with a baking sheet). Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together but don’t let the mixture become too pale and thick. Stiffly whisk the egg whites and gently fold them into the mixture in three goes. Fold in the ground almonds and the baking powder.
- Pour two-thirds of the cake mixture into one of the tins, and the remaining third into the other (I baked it in three goes since I only have one tin.). Give them a couple of taps on the worktop to bring up any air bubbles. Bake the larger cake for 30-35 minutes and the smaller one for 20-25 minutes or until the top feels springy to the touch, the sides are shrinking away from the tin and a skewer iserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove the collars from the cakes and leave them to cool.
- Blend the mascarpone, icing sugarand vanilla extract in a bowl then stir in the raspberries. In another bowl mix the ingredients for the icing until smooth.
- Slit the larger cake in half and invert the top half of the cake as the base, placing it on a cake board or serving plate. Spread with half the filling. Trim the surface off the smaller cake, place as the middler layer of the cake and spread with the remaining filling. Put the bottom half of the larger cake, cut-side up, as the final layer. Coat the top of the cake with the icing using a palette knife, and pile the raspberries in the centre. Dust them with icing sugar and set aside in a cool place for 2 hours for the icing to set.
Enjoy,
N&N
cause baking makes happy 
