Boozy Baking: Double Boozy Raspberry and Almond Madeira Cake

DING DONG, THE BIG DAY IS FINALLY HERE! IT'S THE NEW SERIES OF GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF TONIGHT!

I may be slightly over-excited about this. Except that's not possible, because for the next few Wednesday evenings we get to spend an hour watching brilliant bakers doing things like recreating the London skyline using nothing but battenberg and trifle, and immortalising Paul Hollywood's face in a giant flapjack.

We also get to play the GBBO drinking game in which you take a drink every time Mel and Sue make a brilliantly filthy baking innuendo, every time Mary Berry says 'laaaairs' instead of layers, and every time Paul Hollywood's cold, cruel eyes of judgement stare right into a contestant's very soul.

SPOILER ALERT (in case you like the baking to be a surprise)

This week is cake week, and the contestants are making madeira cake, walnut cake and black forest gateau.

Naturally, it got my boozy baking creative juices flowing, so I've decided to make a boozy madeira cake to eat while I watch the show tonight.  It's super easy and has both raspberry liqueur AND amaretto in it. Double boozy trouble. Naturally, I wanted to share the recipe with you:

Double boozy raspberry and almond madeira cake recipe

Ingredients

For the cake
175ml butter
175ml golden caster sugar
3 eggs
Zest of one lemon (grated)
2-3 drops vanilla extract
200g self-raising flour
60g ground almonds
1tbsp raspberry liqueur (we used Chambord)

For the amaretto buttercream
100g butter
270g icing sugar
1tbsp amaretto liqueur (if you're not a big almond fan, you can use any other flavoured liqueur. Maybe white chocolate liqueur, vanilla liqueur or even elderflower liqueur! Whatever goes with raspberries, basically...)


How to Make It

1. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees (150 degrees if you've got a fan oven like me!) and butter the sides of a loaf tin (mine is a small loaf tin - about 22cm by 13cm by 6cm). Then line the loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl with an electric hand whisk, then beat in the eggs.
3. Gently stir in the vanilla extract and lemon zest.
4. Whisk in the flour and almonds until the batter is nice and thick, then stir in the raspberry liqueur.
5. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, even out the top with a spatula and pop it in the oven for 55 minutes.
6. While it's cooking, you can make the buttercream: make sure the butter is nice and soft (whack it about a bit if you have to) then slowly mix in the icing sugar. Stir in the amaretto at the end. If it turns out a little bit too runny, stir in some more icing sugar until it's a spreadable consistency.
7. When you can stick a skewer/fork into the middle of the cake and it comes out clean, it's ready!
8. Leave it to cool for 5-10 minutes, then remove it from the tin and transfer it to a wire rack to cool some more.
9. When cool, slice the cake in half horizontally (so you have two 'laiiirs' as dear old Mary Berry would say) and spread the buttercream over the top of the bottom layer (okay, laiiir).
10. Sandwich the two halves of the cake together and serve with a cuppa in front of the latest episode of Bake Off.