This raspberry loaf cake is insanely good! The texture is incredibly soft and tender, and it’s bursting with raspberry flavor both in the cake and the icing. Let this beautiful pink cake bright up your day!
What makes this Raspberry Loaf Cake SO good?
This beautiful bright cake melts in your mouth. The texture is ULTRA soft and this is thanks to the sour cream and oil in the recipe. This gorgeous pink cake uses a combination of butter and oil to achive the best of both worlds: a delicous buttery cake that will keep moist for DAYS.
Finally, the flavors in this recipe are all natural with no artificial ingredients. The addition of lemon zest and juice further enhances the raspberry flavors without taking away from them.
Tips for making Raspberry Loaf Cake
Use room temperatured ingredients – Using room temperature butter will ensure that you can mix them fluffy and pale. If you use cold butter you run the risk of the butter separating from the sugar as well as the eggs not being fully incorporated into the butter. If you add cold eggs, you will end up with a batter that is thicker and that does not spread in the oven during baking as intended. This impacts also your cooking time which might leave you with dry or under-done cookies – yuck!
Flour – The biggest mistake while baking cakes is often inaccurate amount of flour due to how we pack the flour into the measuring cups. The best method in any baking recipe would be to measure the flour with a weighing scale. However, if you don´t have access to one the next best thing is to spoon the flour into your measuring cup and using the back of a knife to scrape off the top.
Do not over mix – Overmixing can lead to gluten development which will result in a dense and hard cake. Do avoid this make sure to mix on the lowest speed while incorporating the flour into the batter or gently fold with a spatula for better control.
Sinking berries – A common problem while adding berries to cake recipes is that they sink to the bottom of the cake. My tip is to coat the raspberries in some cornstarch or flour before adding them to the batter. You can see that my raspberries sunk to the bottom, most likely because I used frozen raspberries which is more heavy than fresh ones.
Cooldown – Make sure the cake cools down in the baking pan covered with a kitchen towel completely before icing. The cake must be cool to ensure that the icing does not melt into the cake. The kitchen towel will ensure that the cake does not dry out while cooling down.
How to store Raspberry Loaf Cake
Anytime there is fresh fruit or berries in a baking recipe it will impact the shelf life of the cake. The cake can be stored in room temperature in an airtight conntainer for up to 2 days in a dark and cool place. But for longer shelf life you may store it in the fridge for about one week.
If you are planning to freeze the whole loaf cake, then skip the icing step and wrap the cake tightly with plastic wrap, then aluminium foil. When ready to eat, thaw for 8 hours in room temperature then proceed with the icing step. The cake will keep in the freezer for 3 months. Any longer and it might start to taste like “freezer” (the double wrapping will combat this).
Raspberry Loaf Cake
Ingredients
Raspberry Loaf Cake
- 1 3/4 cup (220 g) flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup (200 g) butter
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs
- 2 tbsp neutral oil
- 1/4 cup (50 ml) whole milk
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp lemon zest (about 1 lemon)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice (about 1/2 lemon)
- 1 3/4 cup (200 g) fresh or frozen raspberries
- 2 tbsp cornstarch (coating the raspberries)
Raspberry icing
- 1 cup (110 g) powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp whole milk
- 2 tbsp raspberry sauce (about 1/4 cup or 50 g of raspberries)
- 6-7 fresh raspberries for topping
Instructions
Raspberry loaf cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 ℉ (177 ℃) and grease and line a 1 pound baking pan with parchment paper.
- In a medium sized bowl, rub the sugar with the lemon zest between your fingers until fragrant.
- Beat the butter with the sugar on medium speed until creamy and fluffy.
- Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at the time. Mix well inbetween.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the sour cream, oil, milk, and lemon juice. Beat on low speed until incorporated.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt. Gently fold or mix on low speed until just combined. Do not overmix.
- In a small bowl, coat the raspberries with the cornstarch and toss.
- Either fold in the raspberries to the batter, or layer the batter in the baking pan with the raspberries. The latter method will result in less "bleeding" from the raspberries.
- Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour in the oven or until a wooden skewer comes out clean (some crumbs are ok).
- Once the raspberry loaf cake is finished baking, take it out, cover with a clean kitchen towel and allow to cool.
Raspberry icing
- Whisk together the powdered sugar, lemon juice, milk, a pinch of salt in a small bowl until combined and smooth.
- Squish the fresh raspberries (or thawed if using frozen) in a small bowl with a fork until they are juicy. Pass this through a sieve. You should end up with around 2 tablespoons of sauce.
- Mix the raspberry sauce with the icing until smooth. The consistency should be like thick glue. If its´s too thick, gradually add in 1 tbsp of milk. If it´s too thin, gradually in 1 tbsp of powdered sugar.
- Remove the cake from the pan and pour over the icing. I like a drizzled look on the sides while the top is completely covered. If you want to cover the whole cake, simply double the icing recipe.
- Top off with a few raspberries as decoration and allow the icing to set. Room temperature is fine but fridge will work faster. Now slice and enjoy!