Raspberry Spelt Summer Cake

Imagine a mid-day in summer when the sun is touching your skin, and a fresh breeze passes; this cake is the concentration of this feeling; it is warm and crisp at the same time.

Here the raspberry bushes are in fruit now, and nothing is more enjoyable than baking with fruits/vegetables that I have picked. It’s pleasing. Raspberries forever remind me of the movie Amélie, where she eats them off her fingers, and I do the same sometimes.

Baking nourishes my soul and eases my mind, but it is not always easy. It takes time, patience, and many failures, of course. When developing a recipe, I spend hours reading and experimenting; I have the privilege of living within a community that always gives me honest feedback to make my creations finer. After a few tries, I am finally pleased to share this recipe with you.

This cake has a delicate crumb with crunches of acid, sweet raspberries, and floral undertones. The addition of spelt flour gives it a slightly nutty flavor. I also have made this cake, replacing the spelt flour with einkorn flour, and the result is as good.

You can enjoy this cake as it is or with a bit of crème fraîche on the side. It keeps well up to three days in an airtight container.

Ingredients

90 grams all-purpose flour

35 grams fine-grind spelt flour

60 grams almond flour

120 grams superfine sugar

1 generous pinch of salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 free-range eggs, at room temperature

120 + 20 grams butter, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla purée

A handful of fresh raspberries

1-2 tbsp coarse cane sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Generously grease a 23 cm round cake pan with butter and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Start by browning the butter. Place 120 grams of butter in a small light-colored saucepan over medium-high heat. Swirl the pan gently and continuously until the butter melts and turns golden brown. Remove the pan from the heat. Weight the browned butter (it must have reduced a bit because of evaporation), and add the rest of the butter to the warm browned butter one teaspoon at a time until you have 120 grams in total. Set aside.

Sift the flours in a large mixing bowl. Add the almond flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well with a balloon whisk.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the vanilla purée.

Gently fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture in two parts. Slowly stream the browned butter over the batter and mix. Do not over-mix.

Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan and arrange the raspberries on top. Press down a few into the cake batter. Sprinkle the batter with coarse cane sugar.

Bake for 45 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool before slicing and serving the cake. Decorate with fresh or dried edible flowers, if desired.

Notes

I strongly suggest using fine-grind spelt or einkorn flour, but if you cannot find them, you can replace them with all-purpose flour. The cake will not have the same flavor/texture, but it will still be delicious. 

For browning the butter, I suggest using a light-colored saucepan as this allows you to survey the butter's color more easily.