Rebellious Baking

Raspberry and Amaretti Crunch Cake

In response to popular request from my Facebook Friends, I am sharing my version of this recipe, originally from The Good Food magazine mini book '101 Tempting Deserts'.  

Baking is one of the things I do to relax from designing.  Knitting might be relaxing, but designing is not!  There is a lot of maths, and a lot of head scratching at times.  You need to try and get the pattern exactly right otherwise knitters will be scratching their heads as well, as I don't like it when that happens.  The level of precision required in writing knitting patterns is quite extreme.  One typo (say a 26 instead of a 25) can cause a great deal of confusion.  Not so with baking.

One of the things that appeal about baking is that you can be a little (or a lot) creative and it doesn't usually matter.  The only people who will suffer the consequences of a cake 'gone wrong' will be your family or friends.  And usually they don't mind too much, because let's face it - a homemade cake that's slightly sqwifffy is almost invariably (read 'always') better than a shop bought one.  

So, last weekend, I took some time off from writing my knitting book, and made a cake.  This is the one I made.  I always do things ever so slightly differently from the recipe.  Its my way of rebelling.  In my work, rebelling against the principles of pattern writing is a pretty serious matter, so I have to find other ways to have fun. 

Raspberry and Amaretto Cake 'Pattern'


175g/6oz soft butter (I always use goats butter - it makes much better cakes)
175g/6oz golden caster sugar
3 large eggs (the recipe just says 'eggs' but I reckon that large ones are always the best bet for a cake)
140g/5oz self-raising flour
85g/3oz ground almonds (I buy mine in this lovely big pack from Silver Lane Health Food shop, not to be found anywhere else that I have ever known  They've had the same home printed labels since I was a child, and I remember dragging my long-suffering mother in there to buy free range eggs and Ecover washing up liquid when it was ever so new and super-worthy.  It still the same amazing smell too.)
150g/5½oz amaretti biscuits - the crunchy ones, not the soft ones.  The mini ones are best.
220g punnet raspberries.  The recipe says 250g but the supermarkets seem to sell raspberries in 220g punnets, and let's face it, you are not going to buy an extra one for 30g....The recipe says serve the 30g raspberries with the cake, so I just put all the raspberries in the cake instead and have an extra dollop of creme fraiche.  

To SERVE

Icing sugar to liberally dust
Half Fat Creme Fraiche (the recipe says cream, but there has to be SOME restraint shown here, surely, as its January, and I always find the fresh and tangy flavour of creme fraiche goes better with the sweetness of a cake like this.  Cream is TOOO much).

• Preheat the oven 170º/Gas 3/Fan 150º. (The recipe says fan 140º but I am never organised enough to let my cakes cook that slowly, and it turned out fine on the higher setting).
• Butter and line an 18cm/7 in loose bottomed tin (the recipe says an 8in tin but there was no way enough cake mix for this)
• Break up the amaretti biscuits into rough pieces.  This is easy to do if you pop them all in a large bowl and bash conservatively with the end of a rolling pin.
• Pulse the butter and sugar in a food mixer/blender/Kitchen Aid/hand held mixer, or whatever until soft and creamy, add the eggs and beat in, then the flour and ground almonds.  The recipe says to chuck it all in together, so you can do if you want, but I have experimented with this, and reckon that for best results, mix it up gradually.
• Spread half the cake mix in the lined tin.  Smoother it over so it looks even.  Scatter over roughly half the raspberries and biscuits.  Try and scatter them evenly so they are equally spread out.  Very lightly press them down, but not too much.
• Dollop the rest of the cake mix on top and spread evenly.  Scatter over the remaining amaretti biscuits and raspberries.  I like to push the raspberries down into the mix, as there is no value in burnt raspberries.  
• Bake for 50 - 60 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  You may need to cover lightly with foil for the last 15 minutes of cooking time if the top is beginning to look a bit over-brown.  
• Cool for 15 minutes in the tin.  Run a knife around the edge and turn out.  Serve warm or coiled, liberally (I changed 'lightly' to 'liberally') dusted with icing sugar, with the creme fraiche, and the raspberries, if you bought an extra punnet after all (which if they were 3 for 2 you might have).

I gather that this cake 'per serving' (depending obviously on the size of a serving) will give you an injection of 640 kcalories, protein 12g, carb 68g, fat 37g, saturated fat 17g, fibre 4g, added sugar 34g, salt 0.92g.

So all in all, maybe one for the 'day off' from your New Year diet!

Happy baking!  Post your pics!

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I cut myself an extra small piece by mistake, so I ended up having to have two. Shucks!