Raspberry Sour Cream Bundt & Red Current Sauce

Inspired by a lovely punnet of frozen raspberries and some gorgeous red currents sitting in my fridge I decided to get cake baking again, after all the Grape Crumble Cake only lasted a day, oops!

I decided on Raspberry Creme Fraiche Bundt Cake to be served with a Red current Sauce, additional creme fraiche optional. I love bundt cakes, they’re so pretty but classy too; funnily enough though I’ve only ever blogged one other bundt cake recipe, which can be found here.

The cake had a heavy compact crumb, yet it didn’t feel at all heavy to eat. The opposite was in fact the case, the cake is light as a feather and fluffy as a cloud, tender bellied and moist. It is the creme fraiche that provides the delightful mouth filling smoothness and the lightness here. Sour cream/creme fraiche are magic ingredients when it comes to cake baking; just don’t ask me the how or why question because I honestly don’t know for sure. All I know is that it works a treat.

Fresh raspberries would have been a better choice but I ate the ones delivered by my (all new) organic box delivery simply with some Greek style yogurt. Luckily my frozen ones were fabulous; I’d bought them (fresh, to freeze myself) in Norfolk at a fabulous little store Country Pickings – they’re mainly a green-grocer but sell other local delights such as flours, honeys and fruit wines – don’t expect to find out of season produce though, as Sarah the lovely owner of the shop says herself “we don’t do out of season”. Unfortunately they’re not online (although that would distract from them their specialness in my opinion) but if you’re ever in Mundesley do stop by. I was lucky enough to take a few snaps of the shop too.

All the produce was of incredibly high quality, lovely fresh fruits and vegetables, mainly locally sourced but if not the place of origin was made very clear. I have certainly stocked up well on honey (bringing 6 jars from this shop alone), fruit wine (4 bottles) and various flours. I’m surprised we had room in the car to get everything back home with us!!

My punnet of raspberries weighed around 250g but I feel I could have done with putting double that in the cake mix; not a huge problem but a little more fruit would have been great.

The sharpness of the raspberries really cut the sweet crumb of the cake and was perfect for that anytime of day cake moment, you know the kind of moment when you need cake? Don’t tell me I’m the only one, ha ha. When served with a sweet/sour red current sauce (and a little extra creme fraiche) it became a true dessert.

So on to the sauce; it really couldn’t be more simple. I made a syrup using water and North Norfolk honey from Country Pickings and then added the red currents, allowed them to burst and then passed it all though a sieve before reheating and allowing the sauce to thicken ever so slightly, but be warned red currents contain quite a lot of pectin and it doesn’t take long for you to end up with jam not sauce. If this does happen don’t panic, just let the thickened product down with a little hot water, gradually does it as you don’t want to go too far the other way.

While on the subject of honey can I please ask you all to visit this link to read more about the plight of our bees, we need to help our buzzy honey making friends.