Raspberry crumb top cake

Well, I figured we were in much need of another sweet treat as I came to my attention that my last few posts were a little lacking that department!

I’d been meaning to tackle a ‘crumb top’ style cake for a while, and then one day one of my colleagues brought in a version that he’d made over the weekend.  Of course this contained the usual eggs, milk, butter and refined sugars, but I was curious to see whether I could come up with an equally yummy healthy alternative. A couple of days later, upon my request I found his recipe in my inbox, so the challenge was set!

The original recipe followed a different methodology to the route I eventually took at this use fresh yeast to create a kind of dough for the base, although it had the texture of sponge. I figured that my best bet was to opt for a more standard ‘sponge’ style with the fruit layer and crumb topping to boot. After doing a little research I settled on this recipe by The Post Punk Kitchen to give me my starting point.

This cake was pretty yummy. The sponge was light and the topping crumbly (in my opinion a bit too dry and crumbly to I’d be tempted to use agave as noted below). Also don’t skimp on the amount of jam/fruit as this gives the cake moistness and a beautiful layer of textures.

Recipe: raspberry crumb top cake

Makes one 9’ cake pan (round or square)

Ingredients

Cake base:

¾ cup soy milk

1 tsp cider vinegar/white wine vinegar

¼ cup rapadura plus ¼ tsp stevia

2 tbs coconut butter

2 tbs apple puree

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups white spelt flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

Topping:

½ cup sugar free raspberry  (or other berry) jam

½ - ¾  cup raspberries

1 cup white spelt flour

1/3 cup rapadura (using agave may be better as will be stickier)

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1/3 cup coconut butter melted

Method

Mix the soy milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle in a large bowl. For the topping mix the dry ingredients then add the coconut butter (and agave if using) and mix with fingers until the mixture clumps into fairly large lumps that don’t crumble away immediately. Add extra oil if needed. For the cake base, mix the remaining wet ingredients with the curdled soy milk. Add the dry ingredients and mix well until the batter is very smooth. Pour the batter into a greased/lined cake pan. ‘blob’ the jam onto the top and mix through a little. Break up the raspberries a bit and evenly cover the top of the batter. Sprinkle the crumb topping across the cake evenly and press down into the batter a little. Bake for approx. 30 mins at 180C until a toothpick comes out clean.