Berry Bakewell Cake!
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A simple, delicious berry bakewell cake with fresh berries and almonds – perfect served with custard.
Berry bakewell cake
A couple of weeks ago I posted the recipe I use for my bakewell tart – I adore bakewell tart and its the perfect dessert for a summery evening but I had a thought, sometimes using pastry, or even just making the pastry is effort and I can’t be dealing with that when I am in a rush. Therefore, the berry bakewell cake was born.
This cake is a marriage of a classic sponge, with almonds and fresh berries. It really is that simple. It’s the rare cake that I decided to leave alone, and not decorate with some sort of frosting, because the simplicity of this one really wins.
Sponge
The sponge mix has a standard mix of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, with some ground almonds, vanilla and milk added in. You’d think it might mess with the baking of the sponge, and it just doesn’t! It gives it a wonderfully delicious texture and it’s still so light and utterly scrumptious. Once you have added in the ground almonds, the mix becomes veryyyy thick, but the addition of the fruit brings back the moisture that you need.
- Butter – you can use a baking spread or room temperature unsalted butter
- Sugar – I tend to use caster sugar as a standard in this cake, but golden caster is lovely as well.
- Eggs – I used medium eggs in nearly all of my baking but 2-3 large should also work
- Flour – self raising flour of course!
- Ground almonds – this is what makes it so utterly tasty
- Vanila – an added optional sweetness
Berries
For this cake, you can use whatever berry you like really. I went for raspberries and blueberries because they were what I had in the fridge. Raspberry is classic with bakewell, but I have made this cake with all blackberries, all blueberries, all raspberries, etc etc.
It really is entirely your choice! Personally, my favourite mix is the raspberry and blackberry as I have said, but I have made this many times and also mess around with other fruit! I also do use fresh fruit, but you could try frozen.. it may just take longer to bake because of the extra moisture.
You can either add half of the cake mix into the tin, and layer on some berries, and then add the rest of the mix, or you can just fold all of the fruit through the mixture and pour into the tin. Luckily, because of the almonds, the fruit doesn’t sink too much.
Decoration
The wonderful part of this recipe is that it is very simple to make – bung all the ingredients for the cake in a bowl and mix until its ready – it takes less than a minute to mix together it’s THAT easy. I add some almonds on top of my sponge as they toast during baking and I adore it, and it’s also a little bit of decoration.
The final touch to this cake is a little sprinkle of icing sugar, but that’s obviously optional; It just makes it look very pretty. You can serve this cake with anything you fancy… extra fruit, custard, cream or whatever! As long as you love it.
Berry Bakewell Cake!
Ingredients
- 150 g unsalted butter
- 150 g caster sugar
- 150 g ground almonds
- 150 g self raising flour
- 3 medium eggs
- 2 tbsp whole milk (optional)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
- 250 g berries (125g blueberries/raspberries)
- 25-50 g flaked almonds
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180ºc/160ºc fan and grease and line a deep 8″/20cm cake tin
- Add your butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, eggs, milk and vanilla to a mixer, and beat until smooth!
- Spread half of the mixture on the bottom of the tin – spread the berries on top of the first half of the mixture, then spread the rest of the cake mixture on top
- Sprinkle the cake with the flaked almonds and bake in the oven for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean
- Leave to cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with the icing sugar – serve!
Notes
- This cake will last for 3-4 days at room temperature
- This cake can be served with whatever you fancy... cream, ice cream, custard etc
- You can use whatever berries you like, just stick to 250g maximum
- You can freeze the cake for 3+ months easily
- I use this cake tin in my recipe
ENJOY!
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Hi Jane
Do you think sprinkling a crumbling topping on this cake pre baking would work ?
Love your recipes!
Hey! Yes it would – can make it take a bit longer to bake though x
Hi would it be ok to use white caster sugar instead or would this affect the taste?
Thank you
Changing sugars will change the taste, but it’s only marginal!
Awesome
Hi Jane! Hoping to make this at the weekend – just wondering if you think it would work to dollop jam in the middle instead of/as well as the fresh berries? Thanks!
The jam may sink somewhat but it should be tasty!!
Made this today and i did swap out the vanilla extract for almond extract it was very easy to make and it tasted lovely not sure what I be making next thank you
I made this cake for my Mom’s 60th birthday as Bakewell Tart is one of her favourite desserts! I was over the moon when I saw you had a recipe for a cake version. It was a MASSIVE hit with her and with the whole family – so so simple to make and so delicious!
Hi,
Love your site and am working my way through the recipes.
Could I use almond extract instead of vanilla?
Thank you.
Yes you can!
Could I do this as a tray bake?
Theoretically yes – however, it’s not a large cake at all so you’d probably have to double it at least!
This cake was fab. We had it still warm with some clotted cream. Yum. Thanks for the receipe.
Hi Jane
planning to bake this as a friend has got a lot of blackberries from the allotment haha! recipe doesnt say it so i presume in this one we dont melt the butter? Many thanks for all your yummy cakes 🙂
Hiya! No – room temp would be perfect though! Hope this helps! x
Hi if added grated marzipan to the top before cooking do you think it would turn out ok? Have you tried this before?
I’m afraid I haven’t as I’m not a big marzipan fan! X
Hi Jane! Bakewell tart is my absolute favourite so I am really keen to try this! Have you tried this with frozen fruit or do you think fresh fruit is best? Thank you!
Paula
I haven’t personally tried frozen, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work!
Thank you! 🙂
Hi- I tried it with Frozen fruit and it worked really well! Absolutely love this cake!
Hi Jane, I can use something instead of the almonds as have a nut allergy?
Unfortunately “Bakewell” cakes are based around almonds, so maybe try a different recipe? It’s quite core to this one. Have a look at my Eton Mess Traybake or Wimbledon Strawberry Cupcakes for fruity cake!