Raspberry and white chocolate loaf cake is a super sweet, moist, and fruity treat. Perfect for afternoon tea on a warm day.
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I love chocolate cakes, but I actually prefer a nice fruity loaf cake, especially in the summer. A light sponge with citrus or berries is just perfect.
I mean, it doesn’t hurt that the kids prefer chocolate cakes, so I get to eat more if it’s fruit cake.
But that aside, I just love the really refreshing flavours of an easy loaf cake with fresh berries or fruit juice. You can’t beat it.
This easy raspberry and white chocolate loaf cake with white chocolate buttercream is perfect on a summer’s afternoon with a cold refreshing drink. Definitely one of my favourites – so much so that I’ve got a cupcake recipe too!
Ingredients for Raspberry and White Chocolate Loaf Cake
My basic loaf cake recipe is always the same. Equal parts sugar, flour, butter and eggs, like a Victoria sponge. I only change it for something like a red velvet cake.
I love this basic recipe. You don’t need anything fancy, it tastes great, and once you’ve got to know your oven and its weird quirks (ours is typically quite a bit hotter than it says!), it’s super super simple.
Then once you’ve cracked that, it’s just about adding flavours to make different cakes. For this raspberry and white chocolate loaf cake recipe, I use:
Margarine – Something like Stork, or a supermarket’s own version, is perfect for cakes and a great way to save some money.
Caster Sugar
Eggs
Vanilla Extract
Self-Raising Flour – If you’ve only got plain flour, add a teaspoon of baking powder
White Chocolate Chips – You could also use white chocolate chunks, just breaking up a bar into smaller pieces.
Raspberries – I use fresh raspberries but you can also use frozen raspberries. Just increase the bake time a little.
Unsalted Butter – Margarine is great for baking, but try to always use room-temperature butter for buttercream icing.
Icing Sugar
How to Make Raspberry and White Chocolate Loaf Cake
This recipe for white chocolate raspberry loaf cake is super simple.
You can get full instructions for my raspberry & white chocolate cake in the recipe card at the bottom of this post, and some extra tips below.
Will the Raspberries Sink in a Cake?
Yes.
Raspberries are heavy. They are going to sink.
There are a few things that you can do to limit the sinking, but they are still likely to sink a little bit, and there are often groups of berries towards the bottom. You can see from my photos that mine sink. Just do your best.
Your white chocolate chips will sink a bit too, but less because they are smaller and lighter.
To limit sinking, you can:
- Cut bigger raspberries in half. If they are smaller, they’ll sink less, but they may bleed more into the cake, which isn’t really a bad thing!
- Toss them in flour before adding them to the mix. Coating them thoroughly will help them stick in place.
- Don’t overmix. Make sure your cake batter is thoroughly mixed before adding your fruit, and then just very gently fold through so you aren’t taking too much of that flour off.
- Add half to the batter and sit the other half on top. So mix half in, tip your batter into the cake tin, and then sprinkle the rest on top. They’ll have further to sink.
- Use raspberry powder or freeze-dried raspberries (affiliate links) instead. This is a stronger flavour, so reduce the weight. Freeze-dried are also a lot smaller, so they will be more evenly distributed, like making a chocolate cake instead of a chocolate chip cake. Personally, I prefer using fresh, but it is something that you could try.
- Preheat the oven. This means that your cake starts to bake straight away, which can secure your berries in place.
Decorating Your Raspberry Loaf Cake
To decorate my raspberry white chocolate loaf cake, I pipe on some white chocolate buttercream swirls and then sprinkle over a few raspberries and a handful of chocolate chips.
Sprinkling on freeze-dried raspberries looks good, and you could also drizzle with raspberry sauce (affiliate link) or some white chocolate that’s been mixed with pink food colour if you want more colour.
You could, of course, leave your easy white chocolate and raspberry cake naked or just finish with the white chocolate buttercream.
Another option is skipping the white chocolate and adding raspberry powder (affiliate link) for a cool raspberry buttercream.
Loaf Cake Tips
A few of my go-to loaf cake tips are:
- Use a 2lb tin with reusable baking paper.
- Cool the cake fully in the tin, if you can, to avoid sinking.
- Mix until the batter is smooth, but try not to overmix. I use an electric hand whisk and stop as soon as there are no lumps. I probably mix for less than 2 minutes.
- Use room-temperature butter or margarine.
- Always use unsalted butter and not margarine for buttercream. Margarine is oil-based, which makes it lovely and spreadable, but it will lead to very sloppy buttercream.
- If you are using frozen berries, increase the baking time by a few minutes.
- Cakes with fruit can take longer to cook. If, after 45 minutes, the centre is still raw, loosely cover it with foil so the top doesn’t burn.
- White chocolate can be temperamental, so either melt it in the microwave or over a Bain Marie. Don’t melt directly in a pan. It will seize.
- All the sugar generally means that you can keep your white chocolate and raspberry loaf cake out on the side, but if it’s June/July/August, or you’re in the middle of a heatwave, I’d recommend keeping it in the fridge.
Other Loaf Cake Recipes
If you like this chocolate raspberry loaf, you might also want to try:
- Orange Drizzle Loaf Cake
- Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake
- Coffee Loaf Cake
- Toffee Apple Cake
- After Eight Loaf Cake
- Chocolate Loaf Cake
- Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake
- Lemon Curd Loaf Cake
Raspberry and White Chocolate Loaf Cake
Ingredients
- 170 g Butter or Margarine (at room temperature)
- 170 g Caster Sugar
- 3 Medium Eggs
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 170 g Self Raising Flour (+ 2 tablespoons to coat berries)
- 150 g White Chocolate Chips (+ a handful to decorate – optional)
- 150 g Raspberries (+ a handful to decorate – optional)
For the White Chocolate Buttercream:
- 150 g Unsalted Butter (at room temperature)
- 150 g Icing Sugar
- 100 g White Chocolate (Broken into squares)
Instructions
- Place 150g of raspberries in a small bowl and toss in 2 tablespoons of flour, until they are well coated, leave to one side.
- Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (fan-assisted) and grease or line a 2lb loaf tin.
- Whisk the butter/margarine and caster sugar until smooth.
- Add the eggs one at a time and whisk until combined, adding the vanilla extract with the last egg.
- Whisk in the flour until smooth, with an electric whisk this shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes.
- Carefully fold in the floured raspberries and 150g of white chocolate chips, taking care not to overmix.
- Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes.
- Check the centre with a skewer, if still uncooked, loosely cover with foil and return to the oven, checking with a skewer every 5 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and leave in the tin to cool.
- While the cake is cooling, carefully melt the white chocolate in short bursts in the microwave or over a Bain Marie and leave to one side to cool.
- Beat the unsalted butter until soft.
- Add the icing sugar and continue to beat until the mixture is smooth.
- Fold in the cooled melted chocolate.
- Once the cake is cool remove it from the tin.
- Pipe or spread on the white chocolate buttercream.
- Sprinkle over the remaining raspberries and white chocolate chips if desired.
Notes
- You can also decorate with freeze-dried raspberries or raspberry sauce.
- If you are using frozen raspberries, you may need to bake for 5-10 minutes longer.
- See the post above for more tips, and ways to stop your raspberries from sinking.
Any nutritional information is given as a general guide only and may not be accurate. The information is provided using an online calculator and is specific to my ingredients. Please make your own calculations if you want precise information.
