Raspberry Lemon Cake

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in town this weekend for his Fitness Challenge event, so the streets of downtown Columbus are flooded with over 120,000 people wandering over to the convention center. I am planning to stay home as much as possible. Although I have heard that it is worth checking out if you've never been.

Anyhow, I was picking up a few books at the library and decided to browse the cook book section while I was there...bad idea on an empty stomach. The endless selection of cake recipes and the growling of my hungry stomach had me running to the nearest kitchen supply store to buy myself bundt pan. The delicious smells of cakey goodiness taunted us all morning while D and I waited impatiently for the cake to bake and cool.

Raspberry Lemon Cake

Source: adapted from a mish mash of Carole Walter, Donna Hay and Delia Smith lemon cake recipes

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

3 tbsp oil

4 lrg eggs

1 cup icing sugar

1 1/2 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups raspberries (I used frozen)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour a 9" bundt pan (or whatever you have). Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, set aside. In a large bowl, cream butter and lemon zest. Slowly add oil, beat on medium speed for a couple minutes. Gradually beat in sugars and vanilla. Then add the lemon juice. Alternately beat in eggs, then flour mixture, egg, etc.

Now, toss the raspberries (they should be thawed by now) with a spoonful of flour. Layer the batter and the berries twice, ending with batter layer. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes. It probably takes less time if your berries are fully thawed ((but the berries are messier to deal with this way) or until the top is golden and a knife inserted comes out clean.

Wait as long as you can before downing a big slice of with a cup of tea. Mmm. Watch out for the hot berry clumps .

P.S. You can also make a tart lemon glaze by mixing lemon juice and icing sugar until it's a thick but pourable consistency and then drizzle over the cake - I ran out of lemon so skipped this. Oh, and this was also my first bendy silicon pan, and I liked it just fine - we'll see how it does in the dishwasher.