We love cake! Any kind, really, but especially the fancy, good to look at and eat kinda cakes. For our birthdays I always make a fancy cake. This particular cake, a most delightful Raspberry Charlotte Cake, came out really well and I wanted to share this straight forward to make but spectacular to look at cake with our dear readers. Just in case you need a ‘wow’ cake to impress and celebrate. Or just to eat and enjoy! Cuz, you know, cake ❤️!
Actually this cake was inspired by an over abundance of raspberries. Raspberries are my personal most favorite berry. They are so delicious, tart, yet sweet and so pretty.
I happened upon a bountiful sale of these red lovelies and couldn’t resist scooping up the whole lot. However, as raspberry lovers will well know, these berries go bad rather quickly. So raspberry flavored cake it was.
Here we are macerating the berries with sugar. See how much juice is drawn out due to a simple soaking in sugar? I think that macerating intensifies the flavor.
Purée the macerated berries and then strain out the seeds. You can also keep them in, of course, but since this was meant to flavor a mousse I preferred that the seeds be gone, keeping the mousse smooth as a goose.
To this purée we add powdered gelatin. Make sure to dissolve the powder completely first. To do this we added hot, then cold water.
For the mousse the cream is first whipped until soft peaks form. Then the raspberry juice is gently folded in. That’s it, your raspberry mousse is done! It’s so gorgeously easy to make!
The cookies are first dipped into a sugar syrup that will soften the dry cookies to a cake like texture. Ladyfingers are used first to gracefully decorate the sides of the cake. Then the bottom is lined with more ladyfingers, trimmed to fit, to form the bottom layer of the cake.
It doesn’t matter how the bottom layer looks as it will soon be hidden under the mousse. But the standing up lady fingers should be neat as a pin.
This next step is to add a layer of fresh raspberries. Looks good already, eh?
Over the fresh raspberries the mousse is poured and gently smoothed flat with a spatula. Be gentle here as you don’t want to disturb the raspberries underneath. The cake is now chilled for a couple of hours to set the mousse.
On to cake decoration! First we add beautiful red raspberries on top of the mousse. So pretty!
Then we pipe little white puffs of whipped cream in between the raspberries.
The last step is to add a jewel like layer of raspberry jelly. Boil down raspberries (more raspberries!), add gelatin and chill until the jelly is thickened but still very pourable. Don’t add on hot, you’ll melt the mousse!
On to the last step, the pour! What a moment! To crown off our lovely Raspberry Charlotte Cake a stream of translucent red jelly is poured over the mousse, smoothly spreading to fill in all the nooks and crannies. Doesn’t it look professional? So smooth and shiny and a perfect, perfect raspberry red! I was so pleased!
So fancy, amirite?! Wowoo, I was really proud of this cake! Birthday girl was tickled pink as well. Enjoy the cake love, dear readers!
Raspberry Charlotte Cake Recipe
(Makes 8” cake) Prep time: Cook time:
Ingredients:
Sugar Syrup:
Raspberry Mouse:
- 2 cups fresh raspberries, 250g /9 oz
- 1/3 cup sugar, 67g
- 1 1/2 tsp unflavored gelatin
- 2 tbsp hot water
- 2 tbsp cold water
- 1 1/4 cup heavy cream, 300g
- 2 tsp lemon juice
Raspberry Jelly:
Directions:
Make the sugar syrup: Heat sugar with water in a small pot, stirring until the sugar is melted. Add a tsp of orange blossom water (optional). Let cool completely.
Line the cake with lady fingers: Slice off the bottom 1/2 inch (the curved bit) of enough lady fingers to encircle the cake. This slice is to allow the lady finger to stand vertically at the sides of the cake.
Dip lady finger into sugar syrup, soaking just thru, and then position along side of cake tin with the curved side out. Repeat until the cake is completely lined with lady fingers all around the sides.
Do the same procedure as above to line the bottom of the cake tin, except lay the lady fingers down flat in one or two layers (up to your preference, we used one) and break them as needed to completely line the bottom. For this part it doesn’t matter how it looks, except it should be flat, as you can’t see it once the mousse covers it later.
Add a layer of fresh raspberries, placing neatly with bottoms pointing up.
Make the mousse: Macerate the raspberries by adding sugar, tossing and let sit for an hour. There should be quite a bit of juice from the maceration. Purée with a hand blender, then strain to remove seeds.
Add hot water to powdered gelatin, stir until completely dissolved. Add cold water to the gelatin and stir. Mix into the raspberry purée.
Whip the cream in mixer until soft peaks form. Fold the raspberry purée into the whipped cream. Stir in the lemon juice.
Scoop into the cake center and smooth the top with a spatula. Cover and let set in the fridge for 2 hours.
Make the top jelly layer: Purée the raspberries. Put through a fine sieve to separate out the seeds. Sprinkle gelatin powder into raspberry juice and let bloom for 5 mins. Stir in sugar, taste, and add more if needed.
Heat over low heat until warm, stirring until the sugar is melted. Let cool in fridge until the jelly is thick and sticky but still very pourable.
Decorating the cake: Add decorative raspberries all round the cake tucked up against the lady fingers, leaving a half inch space between the berries.
Whip the 1/8 cup heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Add to a piping bag and pipe little puffs of whipped cream between the raspberries.
Pour raspberry jelly over the cake until no more mousse shows. Add more if you would like to have a thicker jelly layer.
Let the jelly set by chilling the cake once more for an hour in the fridge.
Your gorgeous raspberry charlotte cake is now ready to serve. Enjoy the cake love!
Cake-licious at The Hong Kong Cookery:
