Raspberry ripple sandwich cake & white chocolate ganache

Raspberry_ripple_cakeHands up if you love the Great British Bake Off! I adore watching it and even thought about entering last year but my daughter was just 1 and realistically I would have probably ended up having a nervous breakdown.

I might not be baking in a tent but thanks to bloggers The Crazy Kitchen and Mummy Mishaps I have the chance to take part in the #GreatBloggersBakeOff a new linky following the themes of the TV show each week.

This week there were 3 choices, a sandwich cake, an angel food cake or a chocolate show stopper. I REALLY wanted to try the angel cake but with my son’s birthday next week I couldn’t justify buying the all important tin so instead I’ve opted for a Raspberry Ripple Sandwich cake with White Chocolate Ganache.

Ingredients

For the cake:

250g unsalted butter (softened)

250g castor sugar

250g self-raising flour

4 eggs (beaten)

3 tsp vanilla essence

Splash of whole milk

Pre-heat the oven to 180c

For the ripple:

1 punnet of fresh raspberries

30g castor sugar

For the ganache:

250g good quality white chocolate (with more to decorate)

125ml double cream

(I also used some extra raspberries for decoration)

 

Method

The cake mix starts out as a standard vanilla sponge:

  • In a free-standing mixer beat together the butter and sugar until smooth.
  • Mix the vanilla essence with the beaten egg and slowly add to the buttercream while mixing on a slow speed.
  • Fold in the flour and add whole milk gradually until the mixture falls easily from a spoon.

To make the raspberry ripple:

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  • Wash the raspberries to remove any bugs, place in a small saucepan over a low heat and stir.
  • As the raspberries start to break down and water escapes add the 30g* of caster sugar and continue to stir.
  • Once the raspberries begin to breakdown you can stop stirring but do keep an eye on the pan and stir occasionally.
  • When the raspberries have completely broken down pass the sauce through a fine sieve (which I don’t have**) to give a smooth consistency and remove the seeds.
    *I don’t know why 30g of sugar leapt into my head for this recipe, it just seemed about right. I wanted to keep the sharp flavour of the raspberries to counter the sweet white chocolate of the ganache – If you want a sweeter ripple just add more sugar and taste.
    **As mentioned above I don’t have a fine sieve, just a normal one for sifting flour etc. I passed the mixture through this twice to make it as smooth as possible.
  • Add about a third of the ripple mix to the cake batter and fold very gently to create a ripple effect. If you mix too much your cake will just be pink 🙂
  • Butter and line two 8 inch sandwich tins and carefully split the mixture between them agitating it as little as possible. If you do lose the ripple effect you could always fold a little bit more through once the mixture is in the tin.
  • I added a spiral of the ripple to the top of each cake but later changed the way I was decorating the cake so needn’t have bothered. If you just want a simple top this adds a nice touch.
  • Bake for aprox 30 minutes in a 180c pre-heated oven or until a cake tester comes out clean.

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When I came to decorate the cake I changed from my original plan of showing the swirled top of the cake. Instead I levelled both cakes and used a white chocolate ganache to cover it.

  • Measure out 125ml of double cream and leave to come to room temperature.
  • Place 250g of white chocolate in a microwaveable bowl and in 10 second bursts heat until the chocolate begins to melt.
  • Stir the chocolate until al lumps have melted. The idea is to keep the chocolate as cool as possible while still melted.
  • Add the room temperature cream to the melted chocolate and stir until the ganache thickens. (This can take a while depending on how warm the chocolate was.
  • Once the ganache thickens either pour over your cake for a glossy finish or (as I did) whip the ganache with the whisk attachment in a free-standing mixer until it becomes thick enough to pipe / hold it’s shape.
  • I placed half of the ganache in a separate bowl and added some raspberry ripple by folding through very carefuly.
  • I used some of this rippeled ganache to sandwich the cake together and kept the rest for the top.
  • I then used the plain ganache to thinly coat the top and sides of the cake.
  • I added the remaining rippled ganache to the top of the cake then covered it with raspberries (which effectively hid the rippled effect but hey-ho).
    When adding the raspberries do make sure they are completely dry after washing, they tend to hold water inside and water doesn’t do well with ganache.
  • Finally I piped stars of plain ganache around the edge and shaved some white chocolate from the back of a bar to finish it off.

In addition to entering this recipe into the Great Bloggers Bake Off I’m also adding this post to the calendar cakes linky run by Dolly Bakes and Laura Loves Cakes because this month’s theme is Summer Lovin’ and nothing says summer to me like Raspberry Ripple 🙂

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6 comments

  1. jenny paulin says:

    ooooh i do love raspberry and white chocolate and this sounds very nice !! i really like the raspberry swirl you incorporated into the sponge.
    maybe next year you can apply? that would be such an amazing experience x x
    thanks for linking up

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