raspberry crumb cake

I had a punnet of raspberries and an orange sitting in the fridge (can you guess what's about to happen?) because Tesco had their usual 2 for £4 offer on raspberries (and I only managed to use one punnet) and the orange was purchased for the purpose of making orange buttercream or perhaps orange flavoured macarons - as it turned out I made only one flavour of macarons (cocoa) and I had way too much raspberry buttercream to be even thinking about making another batch. So, what to do with an orange and raspberries? I wasn't sure that it would be possible to combine the orange and raspberry flavours - they're both rather dominant and I thought they might clash. However a search through the vast internet brought up some orange and raspberry results, although not many. But not many was enough to convince me that it could work. Eventually I settled on this recipe, which actually uses lemon zest. But I thought I'd substitute the lemon for orange and if the flavours really turned out disastrous at least the crumble would save it. Luckily I didn't have to rely on the crumble to save the cake as it really did work! It probably would have worked better with lemon, but I had an orange and not a lemon in my fridge :)

Verdict: Who would have thought orange and raspberries could actually go well together?
Score: 9.5/10

Raspberry Crumb Cake

Ingredients

Crumble topping:

* 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp flour
* 3 tbsp sugar
* 3 tbsp brown sugar
* 1/8 tsp salt
* 5 tbsp chilled butter

Cake batter:

* 2 cups raspberries, fresh or frozen (not thawed)
* 2 cups plus 2 tsp all-purpose flour
* 2 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp salt
* 2/3 cup sugar
* grated zest of half a lemon
* 3/4 stick (6 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 2 eggs, room temperature
* 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup buttermilk

Method

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350F. Butter an 8 inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.
2. For the crumb topping: In a food processor, pulse flour, salt and sugars. Cut butter into 1/4-inch cubes and add to the flour mixture. Pulse until the butter is pea-sized and coated with flour. Do not let the dough come together in a ball. Set aside at room temperature.
3. For the cake: Using your fingertips, toss the raspberries and 2 tsp of flour together in a small bowl just to coat the berries; set aside. Whisk together the remaining 2 cups of flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. Working in the bowl of a stand mixer, rub together the sugar and zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the butter and, with the paddle or whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat the sugar with the butter at medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one by one, beat for about 1 minutes after each addition, then beat in the vanilla extract. Don’t be concerned if the batter looks curdled-it will soon smooth out.
5. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately, the flour in 3 parts and the buttermilk in 2(begin with the dry ingredients). You will have a thick, cream batter. With a rubber spatula, gently stir in the berries.
6. Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top gently with the spatula. Pull the crumb mix from the refrigerator and scatter over the batter.
7. Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until the crumbs are golden and thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool just until it is warm or until it reaches room temperature.