Last month, we came home to Prague from the family’s summer house in the southern part of the country carrying boxes of freshly picked fruits and vegetables. The raspberries were picked from the garden and from the side road leading to the woods. There were also tons of red and black currants from the garden while the cherry trees by the public playground still had plenty of fruits. This kind is not the usual red picture-perfect kind. It’s smaller and black in color. I like this kind better in baking because the cherries kinda just melt in your mouth, except that you have to bake them with their pits.

I went on a baking spree right the next day.  I  found this cake recipe from an Albert magazine at my mother  in law’s kitchen and thought I would substitute the blueberries with the raspberries we had.   Mamka baked this cake following the recipe to the tee so I can say this one is really made for blueberries.  But the one I made with raspberries was also delicious.  This recipe is definitely a keeper.  Thank you, Albert!

The original recipe requires 400 g blueberries.  With raspberries, I cut it to half as I didn’t top the cake with them.  I also used two Philadelphia cream cheese instead of soft cottage cheese.

Here’s the original recipe roughly translated from Czech by me with my notes and tweaks in italics:

Ingredients:

• 170 g softened butter
• 170 g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 220 g fine flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 sachet vanilla sugar (Note: I think this can be substituted by a tsp of vanilla extract.)
• 150 ml sour cream
• 400 g blueberries  (200 g raspberries)

Frosting:

• 200 g soft cottage cheese ( 200 g Philadelphia cream cheese)
• 100 g powdered sugar

Instructions:

• Pre-heat oven at 180°C.
• Grease and line a 22 cm baking tin with a baking paper.  ( This I didn’t do.  I just greased the tin with a lot of butter because I know mine is 100% non-stick.)
• Mix butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar in a bowl with a wooden spoon for about two to three minutes until well blended.  Switch to a hand mixer and blend well for about two minutes.  (I just used a hand mixer right away until the dough/ batter was smooth.  Sometimes I find Czech recipes unnecessarily complicated.)
• Mix in four spoons of sour cream and fold in half of the blueberries. (In my case, all  200 grams of raspberries.)
• Pour the mixture in the prepared tin and even the top out.  Bake for about 50 minutes or until cake is smooth and skewer inserted comes out clean.  Leave in the baking tin for about ten minutes, then take it out and let it cool preferably on a wire rack.  ( I just left  it for a couple or so hours.  It was easy to take the cake out once it has completely cooled down.)
• For the frosting, mix the cottage cheese and the powdered sugar together with the rest of the sour cream.  Mix or blend until smooth.  Spread the frosting on top and sides of the cake and top it with the rest of the blueberries.  ( I used the hand mixer to blend the Philadelphia cream cheese and sugar.  I also added a teaspoon of vanilla extract  because, well, I can. 🙂

And that’s it, cake’s ready.  This one’s best eaten after a few hours in the fridge.  I actually loved it after it was already two days old in the fridge as the flavors blended more together.

Happy summer baking!

xoxo