Safeway had a deal on raspberries a few weeks back, and I knew there were some raspberry recipes lingering in Section 3 of the book that I needed to get to sooner or later. After purchasing said raspberries, the only recipe that I had all of the other ingredients for was this one, 16-28: Raspberry Meringue Cake.
I didn’t make this for a ladies’ luncheon or anything cult-of-domesticity like that–I made this to eat. I shared some with my husband, but sometimes, you just don’t need a special occasion for cake.
The recipe calls for raspberry jam or fresh raspberries–I used both because I had both. Never too much raspberry.
Ingredients. There’s really not that much to this cake–with the exception of the raspberries (and even then), you probably have all of this on hand. If you make it with the meringue, it’s a dairy-free dessert option.
Creaming the sugar and eggs in the stand mixer.
Didn’t have a springform pan (I do now though, thanks to a trip to the restaurant supply store for Valentine’s Day–I’ll skip the candy and roses in favor of new kitchen toys), so I used a 9″ greased and floured cake pan. This probably weighed the cake down some towards the edges, but it was either that or a sticky, malformed light cake.
Doesn’t seem like a lot of batter, does it?
After baking. It slopes some towards the edges (probably due to the flouring), but it’s definitely still usable.
I’d be interested to try it again with the springform pan and see if it slopes less, especially without the use of flour. At least it came out of the pan in one solid piece.
Sliced it in half with my long serrated knife. I could have taken off the slope on the top to even it out some, but I’m okay with the slope since the cake isn’t going anywhere.
Close up of the interior–it had a pretty airy texture, like a shortcake.
Covered the bottom layer with most of the jam, and then layered fresh raspberries on top, saving some for the outside if you want. I used the rest of the jam on the other layer, but less heavy of a layer since it had to flip and stay solid.
With strawberries and whipped cream (as the recipe suggests as alternatives), this would totally just be strawberry shortcake.
Whipping egg whites for meringue, using a cold, clean metal bowl and cold egg whites.
Meringue plopped unceremoniously on top of the cake already on its sheet pan for easy spreading and baking.
After meringue spreading, with some artful flourishes for texture and soon-to-be color.
After baking for a few more minutes in the oven. Now it’s much more solid, and ready for eating!
Here’s the gory insides. The cake was good, but a bit dry. All in all, it wasn’t terrible, but I don’t know if I’d waste the calories on it again.
Plated, more composed piece. The slope makes it a bit awkward, but if you got some more volume on the cake itself, you could maybe add an extra layer which would be more interesting. Or double the cake recipe and make it a multilayer cake, with different fruits? Ok, end of stream of consciousness.
Grade: B-
