Vanilla Pound Cake With Raspberries and Cream

I hope I'm not a boastful person but really this vanilla pound cake nails the pound cake genre perfectly. It has a tight crumb, soft texture and is so velvety soft I was in raptures. The cream, raspberry sauce and fresh raspberries is the icing on the perfect pound cake! I called her Dolly.

I've already given you a recipe for pound cake using the reverse creaming method that produces the most beautiful cake crumb, but this time I thought I'd try it out with a lower baking temperature. In the end I can't say that the baking temperature made the cake more or less moist really in the end. I also made this in a classic vanilla flavour because I thought that that was what people were more likely to make over yuzu. I also love this cake because it is very simple and comes together quickly. But in the end I love both the vanilla and yuzu and I think you could go with either and be very happy.

I was recently faced with a choice between one thing that I love and one thing I dislike. I was on a trip and they asked me if I wanted to join the hotel's morning yoga class. Nobody else was interested in doing it and opted for breakfast instead which is my first instinct too. However as I was missing pilates quite a bit, I asked if they could do pilates instead of yoga.

I remember Ivy saying to me "Yoga makes me angry" and I had to agree. It makes me unreasonably terse while I adore pilates. The two are similar but I feel like yoga just doesn't do anything for me while pilates does fabulous things for my muscles. They assured me that switching from yoga to pilates was easy and another writer decided to join in the pilates class. The woman arrived and she promised to follow our pilates session with a reiki massage which I have never tried but always wanted to. I was delighted. It was just going to be 30 minutes in total which would allow us just enough time to have a quick breakfast and change afterwards.

Within the first minute I realised that this wasn't pilates, it was yoga, straight yoga and there was no pilates to be had. Then to add to things, the 30 minutes stretched to 45 minutes and I started worrying about our time. I cleared my throat and asked her how long it was going to be. "1 hour," she said. "Oh no, this was supposed to be 30 minutes, we have to leave very soon," I said to her seeing the minutes tick by. Everything is tightly scheduled on these trips and half an hour can upset everything.

She wrapped up after about 5 minutes and then we lay back for our quick reiki massage. I watched the other girl get hers done. Except it wasn't reiki at all, it was a normal head massage. The yoga lady must have seen my incredulous expression. I lay back and she did my massage. It was fine but really, not what I needed when we just needed to skedaddle. And certainly not reiki by any stretch of the imagination.

"Your head has problems" she said to me bluntly. "It's full of memories, you think too much," she said chiding me. Then she pointed at the other girl, "She is very good though." At this point I was completely over her faux pilates and reiki and wanted to explain that I was indeed having problems stemming from not pilates and not reiki and running massively over time. The other writer whispered to me, "Don't worry about her. I know they sometimes read your head and so I kept thinking positive thoughts about happy things while she was doing my massage!".

So tell me Dear Reader, would you be more likely to make a yuzu or vanilla pound cake? Do you have a preference for yoga or pilates? Do you think too much?

Vanilla Pound Cake With Raspberries and Cream

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour 20 minutes

• 1 1/4 cups caster or superfine sugar
• 1.5 cups cake flour
• 1/4 cup custard powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 230g/8ozs. butter, cut into pieces, room temperature
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 100ml/3.5flozs. milk

• 1/2 cup raspberries

• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1/2 cup double cream or yogurt
• Fresh raspberries and carnation flowers to decorate

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 150C/300F and line a loaf tin with parchment on the base and sides. Whisk the sugar, flour, custard powder and salt. Using the paddle attachment on low speed add the butter piece by piece. At first it will look like sand and then it will look like wet sand.

Step 2 - Add the eggs, vanilla and milk and beat until smooth. Scoop into the prepared tin, smooth over the top with an angled spatula and bake for 1 hour 20 minutes or until the centre has risen and cracked. Cool completely.

Step 3 - In a food processor blend the 1/2 cup of raspberries until smooth. You can also strain them through a sieve if you prefer a smoother consistency. Add sugar.

Step 4 - Dollop cream or yogurt on top and then spoon over the raspberry sauce. Decorate with petals and fresh raspberries.