Finn Ní Fhaoláin recipe: Raspberry upside-down cake

This fella came around as I was doing up cake displays and realised a little colour was needed. This is an amazing recipe for a party cake, as it looks absolutely awesome. It also happens to be gluten-free and dairy-free. But sure who cares? It tastes good.

I really like when the raspberries hold their shape in this recipe, so I’m really careful when I defrost them. You don’t want to throw frozen raspberries into the mix or the batter around them won’t bake right.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Get a pot, pour in a few inches of boiling water, pop it on the hob over a medium-high heat and cover with a large metal sieve. Pop your frozen raspberries into the sieve. The steam from the water will defrost them gently and the raspberry juice that ends up in the water can be simmered down with honey later to make a fruit syrup.

While those lads are defrosting, let’s make the cake mix. Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix. Add all the wet ingredients to a big bowl and whisk thoroughly.

Add the dry to the wet and mix until you have a thick but runny batter.

Line a 23cm spring-form cake tin with baking parchment. Make sure you cover the bottom and the sides – we want all our lovely cake to stay inside the tin.

When your raspberries are defrosted, scoop three cups (400g) of them into the base of the baking tin and drizzle the honey over. Put the last of the berries into the cake batter and give it one gentle swirl through. This gives the cake an amazing marbled colour.

Pour the batter on top of the berries in the tin and pop into the oven for 40 minutes to an hour – baking time depends on the liquid in the berries and the type of oven. It’s ready when a knife poked in comes out with crumbs instead of batter.

Take the cake out of the oven and let it cool in the tin.

To get the cake out of the tin and on to a plate, release the spring-form sides and remove. Place a plate over the top of the cake. Hold on to the plate and you can carefully peel off the baking parchment. This is a really moist cake, so it keeps well for quite a few days in the fridge.