Raspberry sponge cake

Raspberry desserts are just the best, aren't they? This is a light and airy sponge cake baked with a layer of fresh raspberries and a dusting of icing sugar when baked. Easy and simple - it's one of my very favourite summer cakes.

This is a seriously good cake, quite fluffy and light. The secret is to push the fruit into the cake mix, otherwise you’ll end up looking into the oven every five minutes and deciding it’s still not cooked in the very middle – the raspberries on top are too juicy and wet! They need to sink into the cake and bake with the batter puffing up around the fruit.

Raspberries are one of the nicest fruit to bake with – I’ve made muffins and muffers, tarts and friands. Just DON’T WASH THEM. I know, germs and whoever-was-handling-them and all-the-pesticides-they-carry but I think all that cannot outbalance sorry soggy fruit you end up with if you do wash them. Inspect them. If they look good, throw them in. If you’ve grown them, don’t even think about washing. We live in an overly sterile environment anyway.

I have a sneaking suspicion that you can just beat whole eggs with sugar in this recipe, and then proceed with butter and flour, but so far I’ve always done it like below. If you experiment with beating whole eggs, which will make this a ludicrously easy recipe, do let me know how it goes in the comments below!