RASPBERRY AND WHITE CHOCOLATE CAKE

Our mouth-watering Raspberry and White Chocolate Cake is the ideal Mother’s Day treat. Bursting with fruity raspberry flavours and adorned with beautiful crystallized flowers and fresh raspberries, it’s sure to make your mum feel extra special. Many thanks to AGA Specialist Dawn Roads for this lovely recipe.

INGREDIENTS

2 x 20cm tins,  buttered and base lined

225g butter, softened

225g caster sugar

Grated zest of 1 lemon

4 large eggs, beaten

225g self raising flour

100g white chocolate chips

175g fresh raspberries, cut into quarters

Filling and icing:

200g white chocolate chips

250ml double cream

Decoration:

Fresh raspberries

Freeze dried raspberries, optional

Meringue kisses

Fresh or crystallised edible flowers (not ones that have been sprayed with insecticide!) such as primroses, violets or violas

Icing sugar

Method

1. Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest together until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, adding a little flour at the end to avoid curdling. Fold in the flour, white chocolate chips and raspberries. Divide the mixture between the two cake tins.

2. Place the cake tins on the oven grid shelf set on the baking oven floor for 30-40 minutes, until the cakes have risen, golden and cooked.  

3. Let the cakes cool for about 10 minutes then remove them from the tins and place them on a cake cooling rack to go completely cold. 

4. Meanwhile, make the filling and icing, a white chocolate ganache. Place the white chocolate chips into a bowl with 100ml of the double cream. Melt together on the warming plate or at the back of the AGA. When melted remove from the heat, beat together and cool for 15 minutes, then beat in the rest of the cream. This icing is easy flowing and will benefit being refrigerated for an hour before using.

5. Sandwich the cakes together with half the ganache and spread the other half on the top. Decorate with raspberries, meringue kisses and the flowers. Sift over icing sugar just before serving.

Tips:

• If you don’t have a baking mode or oven (such as a traditional 2 oven AGA), place the cake tins on the grid shelf set on the floor of the roasting oven with the cold plain shelf slid above, on the second set of runners down.

• Conventional cooking:  Bake at 180°C, fan oven 160°C, Gas Mark 4.

• Frozen raspberries could be substituted for fresh in the cake mixture.

CRYSTALLISED EDIBLE SPRING FLOWERS

1. To make the decoration, choose some spring flowers such as primroses, violets or violas. Always check that any flowers you use are edible and organic (i.e. no use of insecticides).  

2. Brush lightly over the petals with some egg white – a small paint brush is the best – then dip into caster sugar and put to dry out in a warm place, next to the AGA is ideal or placed on a cooling rack on the warming plate.