Butter cake with raspberry icing

Ingredients:

Basic vanilla butter cake: 

• 1 cup (250g) soft butter
• 1 cup (200g) castor sugar
• 2 tsp (10ml) vanilla essence
• 3 extra-large eggs
• 1½ cups (225g) self-raising flour, sifted
• Pinch fine salt

Raspberry icing:

• 1 ⅘ cups (450g) soft butter
• 5 cups (650g) icing sugar, sifted
• 1 cup (250ml) PnP raspberry jam
• 150g fresh raspberries + extra for decorating

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C.
2. For the cake, line three 20-23cm loose-bottomed cake tins with baking paper and spray with non-stick spray.
3. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla together for 6-8 minutes, using an electric whisk. (The mixture should triple in quantity and become a pale yellow-white.)
4. Add eggs one at a time, whisking well to incorporate before adding the next one.
5. Sift flour into a large bowl, add salt, then the wet mixture and mix.
6. Pour batter into prepared cake tins.
7. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
8. Cool in tin for 5-10 minutes, then unmould and leave to cool on a wire rack.
9. For icing, whisk butter with an electric whisk until fluffy.
10. Add icing sugar 1 cup at a time, and whisk well until incorporated.
11. Place one cake on your serving plate and spread with ¼ cup of the white buttercream.
12. Top the icing with half the jam, spreading it out thinly. (Don’t go too close to the edge of the cake – the weight of the next layer of cake will spread out the filling.)
13. Top with a second cake and spread with icing and jam as before.
14. Place the last cake on top, upside down (this means you’ll have a flat-topped cake for a more modern look).
15. Add raspberries to the remaining icing and whisk lightly – the berries will break up and turn it pink.
16. Spread the outside of the cake stack with an even layer of pink buttercream icing.
17. Decorate as desired, we simply used fresh raspberries.