Stacie Stewart's raspberry, rose and vanilla cake recipe

This raspberry, rose and vanilla cake is a pretty perfect sweet treat when you want to spoil someone for a birthday, Mother's Day or even Valentines. 

It's created by celebrity baker and Food Glorious Food judge Stacie Stewart, and is a beautiful flavour combination. The sharpness or the raspberries is a wonderful contrast with the vanilla and soft rose flavour. Plus the scent, both as you bake and as you eat the cake, is divine. This cake uses a Génoise sponge. It's lighter and softer than traditional Victoria sponge, and technically a little tricker to make - thought not very difficult. Anyway, it's worth the effort and it's a brilliant skill to master. This recipe makes it eminently achievable. 

Ingredients

• 250g caster sugar
• 8 eggs
• 100g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
• 250g plain flour
• Small handful of pistachios, finely chopped, to decorate (optional)

For the rose syrup:

• 75g caster sugar
• 100ml rose water (or to taste; less if concentrated)
• Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla pod

For the raspberry mousse:

• 100g raspberries, plus extra to decorate
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 250ml double cream

For the rose buttercream:

• 115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp rose water
• 500g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Grease 2 x 20cm tins and line with baking parchment.
2. Place a large heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water on a medium heat, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Put the sugar and eggs in the bowl and whisk until the mixture is hot. Remove from the heat and beat for 10 minutes more, until doubled in volume, light and mousse-like.
3. Melt the butter in a pan and cook until it smells nutty and turns light brown. Leave until almost cool. Gently pour the butter into the egg mixture, whisking continuously.
4. Sift the flour and fold it into the egg mixture. Divide the mixture between the 2 tins and bake for 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes, then turn out and leave it to cool on a wire rack. To make the syrup, put the sugar, rose water and vanilla seeds in a pan with 3 tbsp water, then boil for 5 minutes, until syrupy and slightly reduced. It will thicken as it cools.
5. To make the mousse, blend the raspberries with the icing sugar and pass through a sieve. Whip the cream until stiff, then fold in the raspberry purée. Cover and chill.
6. To make the buttercream, beat the butter until softened, then add the vanilla, milk, rose water and icing sugar and beat until creamy and thick.
7. To assemble, cut both cakes in half so you have 4 slices. Place one of the cakes on a board. Drizzle liberally with the rose syrup and spread with a third of the raspberry mousse. Repeat, finishing with a cake. Crumb-coat (see page 14) the cake and leave to set for 10 minutes. Spread the buttercream over the cake using a hot palette knife. Top with raspberries and pistachios, if you like.

Top tip for making Stacie Stewart's raspberry, rose and vanilla cake

Swap the raspberries for strawberries or redcurrants if you prefer, or blackberries later in the year.

Although there are four steps to this cake: sponge, buttercream, syrup and raspberry mousse, the latter three are very simple to create and do not take much extra time. If you want to make things a little simple, you can swap the raspberry mousse for layers of whipped cream, and just dot some raspberries over it.

You might also like...

• Victoria sponge cake
• Mary Berry's lemon drizzle cake
• Valentine's Day cakes