A Tall, Cool Drink of Summer Dessert: Raspberry Lime Rickey Cake

Recently I received an email from King Arthur Flour that featured a recipe for Raspberry Lime Rickey Cake. I immediately went to the King Arthur website to check out the recipe; I love citrus and I was captivated by the photo of the cake, which is topped with sparkling sanding sugar instead of frosting.

I won't spend much time describing the recipe inspired by the classic New England beverage, since it's covered in detail on the King Arthur Baking Banter Blog. I made the cake last night with just a couple of deviations from the recipe. I wanted to boost the flavor of the sugar topping but didn't have any lime oil on hand, so I rubbed a tablespoon of zest (one lime's worth) into the sanding sugar until the sugar was damp, before I sprinkled it onto the cake. I think the extra zest in the sugar topping was a great addition -- it boosted the lime flavor overall and added some beautiful color.

For the raspberry sauce, I didn't think that the rather gloppy looking sauce full of seeds from the King Arthur recipe was terribly attractive. Instead, I made the sauce from Marcel Desaulniers' White Chocolate Patty Cake, which is thawed frozen raspberries, lemon juice, and sugar blended together in the food processor and put through a fine sieve.

This cake was incredibly delicious. The top half of the cake was damp with lime-sugar syrup, and the tart raspberry sauce was the perfect complement to the citrus flavor. However, my absolute favorite part was the sugar topping. Since you sprinkle the sugar on the cake right after brushing on the lime syrup, the sugar sticks firmly onto the top of the cake and adds a marvelously sweet crunch. It was slightly reminiscent of the hard caramel topping on a crème brûlée, except that it was even crunchier, and completely limetastic.

The bright lime flavor of this cake was a warm ray of sunshine befitting this summer solstice day!

Recipe: Raspberry Lime Rickey Cake from King Arthur Flour.

Comments

Louise said…
I love citrus cakes too, and this looks fantastic.