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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J x
© Jane’s Patisserie. All images & content are copyright protected. Do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, please re-write the recipe in your own words and credit me, or link back to this post for the recipe.
I’ve only got semi skimmed milk – will this be OK to use or not? Thankyou!
Hiya! I always recommend whole milk for the best results. Hope this helps! x
HI, can i use jam instead of the berries?
I make a bakewell cake using raspberry jam in the middle just as Jane has added the berries it always turns out great. I’d give it a go.
Fresh berries not great at the moment, have you tried using frozen berries? I always have a mix in the freeze when fresh are not in season, but wouldn’t want to ruin the cake if frozen is not suitable
Hiya! I personally have not tried this, however it is definitely worth a go! Let me know the outcome! x
Did you try frozen? I have a bag of frozen berries to use up x
I did mine with frozen berries and it turned out well. I have some left so I’m going to make one again but will swap golden sugar with white one.
I’ve just made this cake and I’ve put apple and berries in it I want to keep it for Xmas, what is the best way to keep it fresh and how long will it keep, thanks
Just made this with strawberries Jane absolutely delicious thank you for another amazing recipe .x
You are very welcome xx
Hi Jane when I click for Bakewell tart it says page not found and cannot find on your blog
Hey, unfortunately I had to remove the post but I hopefully will upload it again soon xx
I had some apricots I needed to use up so tried them in this instead of berries and it was delicious! So simple and so delicious! Thank you 😊
Ooo how lovely! I am so glad you enjoyed xx
Hi Jane,
Thank you so much for this delicious recipe! I absolutely love it and it is beautifully written.
I didn’t do so great though. Please excuse my essay below.
The only differences I made were I added extra 2 teaspoons of almond extract and also I didn’t have any flaked almonds to put on top because my local store ran out of stock. I baked it for 50mins and the toothpicks came out clean so I thought it was perfect. I waited for it to cool and dusted powered sugar on top, then I began to cut it and it was all soggy in the middle and it was sunk in the middle a bit, but extremely soggy. I think the reason why was I washed the berries before hand and maybe I didn’t dry them well and efficient enough. Do you think that is correct? Please forgive me but I’m not a highly experienced baker. I managed to save a part of it around the outside, and that was absolutely 5* so delicious and moist! Also do you think your recipe would work with glacier cherries?
Hey! Yes it sounds under baked due to moisture and yes you can use glacier cherries xx
Hi Jane
Love the Berry Bakewell cake, so yummy! I love Bakewell tart & clicked the link for your recipe but it just comes up as an error message. Is it possible for you to upload your recipe again for Bakewell tart please?. Thanks very much.
Hi Jane. This is very yummy. Thanks for the recipe.
Can I freeze it (once baked and cooled)?
Yes you can!!
Hi Jane
I want to make this as a celebration cake with 2 8inch tins and perhaps cream in the middle. Any suggestions on how to do this? X
I would double the recipe and split between the two (As one layer is for one 8″ tin anyway) and then fill with whatever you fancy! x
Hi Jane
This is definitely one of my favourite cakes! I would like to make it a square one so do you think a 20cm/8 inch square tin would work? Thank you!
Usually a square tin is equal to a round that is 1″ bigger… so an 8″ round is actually a 7″ square (for best results) or just increase the recipe slightly! x
Hi Jane, could I use fresh cherries in the middle along with raspberries?
X
Yes!! x
Hi Jane, in the recipe you’ve mentioned, Add your Butter, Sugar, Flour, Ground Almonds, Eggs, Milk and Vanilla to a mixer, and beat till smooth!
– Does it mean put them all together at ones and beat? If yes for approximately how long in the mixer?
– or do you mean, in the mixer add butter & sugar mix well, then add egg mix and then flour?
Could you please explain, as I am waiting to bake this cake.
For this one, I just add it all together – but you can do it slower if you wish.
Hi jane
Made this cake the other day.turned out lovely but there was only a hint of almond taste from it.is it ok to add some almond essence
Yes of course, if you want more almond definitely add extract!