Sometimes, I can be inspired to create new flavors of cake from the strangest of things. Ice cream is my inspiration a lot of the time, especially good ice cream with as little ingredients as possible. Perhaps it’s the way that the flavors dance on your tongue and the way they play together in one bite. Good ice cream, for me, is never overly sweet and you can taste the actual flavors of the ice cream before you taste any sweetness. That’s the way I like my cake too, with lots and lots of real flavor and just enough sweetness to prove the point that it is actually dessert.
I was at my local grocery store the other day browsing around and these simple little containers caught my eye. I saw the flavor and was intrigued, then as I always do, I immediately flipped to the back to find the ingredient list. I was happy to find cream, milk, black raspberries, sugar and chocolate. Yay! I could pronounce everything on the list and they were all real ingredients, no “raspberry flavoring” thank goodness. So of course, I HAD to buy it…it was calling my name and it was the most lovely shade of lavender from the black raspberries. The container sat in my freezer for several days until I spotted it again and decided to try a bite. I wont go into details about how absolutely lovely it was, I’ll just say that it was so good it inspired to me to make a cake.
Did I mention it was SO SOOOOOO GOOD!?
Okay, anyhoo….
This recipe doesn’t use any chemical leavening and instead uses soda to make the cake rise. For these flavors, I chose a raspberry hard cider (the alcohol burns off), but you could also use a flavored san pellegrino, or a natural citrus soda.
Organic Honey Blackberry Pound Cake
(makes 1 bundt pound cake)
Note: This recipe uses all organic ingredients, but you can certainly substitute non-organic ingredients if you wish.
3 sticks organic sweet cream butter (unsalted, at room temperature)
2.5 cups organic sugar (we grind ours fine in food processor)
1/2 cup good local honey
5 whole organic eggs (at room temperature)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 cups organic unbleached all-purpose flour (sifted)
1 cup raspberry hard cider
blackberry puree (recipe below)
To make blackberry puree:
Put 2 cups of fresh organic blackberries, 1 tablespoon organic sugar and 1 tablespoon raspberry hard cider (or soda) in food processor and mix well until liquified. Strain out the seeds through a mesh strainer.
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
- Liberally butter and flour a bundt pan. Set aside
- Cream together the butter and the sugar with a pinch of kosher salt until fluffy
- Add the eggs in one at a time and mix well after each addition
- Add the vanilla extract and honey and mix to combine
- Add the sifted flour to the butter mixture in 3 additions mixing only until just combined
- Slowly add the cider and finish mixing
- Remove two cups of the batter and put in a medium bowl. Add the strained blackberry puree and mix gently
- Spoon the regular batter into the prepared pan
- Spoon the blackberry batter on top of the regular batter and smooth
- Bake in preheated oven for 1 hr and 10 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes or until skewer or cake tester comes out clean
- Cool in pan for 10 minutes then invert cake upside down onto plate
To make chocolate glaze:
For this ganache glaze, it’s 1:1 ratio of chocolate to cream. x grams of semi-sweet chocolate to x ml of heavy cream. Heat cream in sauce pan with dash of vanilla and spoonful of organic sugar until bubbling on the sides of the pan. Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate and stir gently with a whisk until dark and silky smooth. Pour over the cake while slightly warm and let set.
This cake is velvety soft, moist, not too sweet, and full of delicious REAL flavors
Comments
Hello there!
Speaking of your fondant,I was wondering if you’d be willing to share your recipe for fondant? As Nichole was saying, I would be in heaven if my fondant could look like yours!
Thanks!
Hello TLB! I have been wanting to try this cake since you posted it, and i know you should always try a recipe exactly as it is written before you try tweaking it, but I was wondering if there is something i could substitute for the raspberry cider? I don’t drink alcohol, so am not wanting to put it in my cakes. Thanks!
You can use sprite or 7-up, San pelligrino, etc.
Thanks so much!
What point do you add the honey in?
Add in the honey with the vanilla extract.
Hi Erin!
Anyways- could you please tell me about how thick you roll it?
I’m really trying to work on getting my fondant really clean on my cakes (you are just so amazing) and I was wondering about how thick you roll your fondant… I’ve seen mixed things on the internet, some roll it thick, and others thinner. Im trying to achieve the look of your fondant.. or at least get close.
Thanks so much!!
Hi Nichole,
I roll my fondant so thin you can almost see through it. I do it by feel, but I would guess about 1/16 of an inch thick. If I’m covering a dark chocolate ganache cake with a light or white colored fondant, I go up to about 1/8 of an inch. Believe it or not, the thinner your fondant, the more control you will have and the cleaner the final look.
Thanks!
This sounds divine and looks even better! The ice-cream looks delicious – will have to check my grocery store next visit
. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks so much for sharing another one of your amazing recipes!! Can this recipe be baked in round cake pans and stacked, or is it only good for bundt pans?
Yes, this recipe can be baked in regular cake tins of any shape or size, you’ll just need to alter the baking time accordingly.