Raspberry, almond and white chocolate marble cake

Pre heat the oven to 170 deg fan assisted. Grease a Kugelopf Nordicware bundt pan (or your favourite 10 Cup bundt pan) with cake release and dust with a thin layer of flour shaking off any excess. Or use your own method of lining a Bundt pan.

• Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl.
• Add the almond extract to the beaten eggs, give it a little mix. This will help disperse the Almond flavour evenly throughout the cake batter.
• While the mixer is going, slowly pour the egg mix into the cake batter adding a little flour as you go along to help prevent curdling.
• Add the remaining flour and ground almonds and mix until well combined.
• Add the buttermilk and (melted) chocolate. Mix until well combined
• Put half the cake batter into a large bowl. Add a little pink colouring as required. Add the dried raspberries. Mix until well combined and an even colour. You should now have a bowl of pink cake batter and a bowl of plain cake batter.
• Alternately spoon both batters into the bundt pan and create a marble effect using a cake skewer or spatula making swirling motions through the batter. Tap the bundt pan on your counter top, to ensure there are no air pockets and all the batter fills the crevices of the bundt pan.
• Bake for 45 mins in the centre of the oven or until baked. Testing various parts of the cake with a skewer until it comes out clean.If the top starts to look a little too golden during baking, cover with a sheet of baking parchment to help prevent it from burning.
• When baked, take out of the oven and leave in the tin to cool a little (about 10 – 15 mins) before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. If you try to turn the cake out while it’s still hot, you may find that some of the cake will stick to the cake tin, especially if you have not coated the bundt pan properly
• Leave the cake to cool completely before you decorate with the melted chocolate. If you don’t, the chocolate will pour down the sides of the cake and pool into your serving dish.
• While the cake is cooling, melt the chocolate in a heat proof dish over a pan of simmering water. Once all the chocolate has melted, take off the heat and leave to cool to a slow runny consistency. Too runny and it will pour down the sides of your cake into your serving dish.
• Decorate the cake with the chocolate and top with the freeze dried raspberries.

The added buttermilk and ground almonds, give this cake a lovely (slightly nutty) moist texture. The white chocolate is to die for. Make sure you use the best flavoured that you can. I used Green and Blacks.

Recipe By Lynn Hill. Baking Ambassador, ICSA