My boyfriend asked me to make his favorite cake to have on his birthday. This was easier said than done because it’s a very specific cake, one his mom made for him often. It’s a raspberry cake and we always had it with creme fraiche and fresh raspberries on top.

I’ve made a cake like this for him once before, using a recipe I found online that I can no longer locate. It wasn’t the exact same cake, though, and I really wanted to bake the exact same cake. Birthdays are important.

Luckily, he found it among his mother’s recipes and I was able to shop for all the proper ingredients earlier this week. It’s raspberry cake with Marsala, creme fraiche and raspberries from the June 2002 issue of Bon Appetit, and fortunately for you it’s online (and for me, because now I don’t have to type it out). I don’t know why it never came up in all my Google searches for “raspberry cake,” but I kind of like that I have the same hard copy of the recipe his mom used.

(I was going to use this recipe for raspberry buttermilk cake, adapted from Gourmet, that I found on SmittenKitchen. If that sounds more your style, I am sure it is a very good cake indeed.)

Ready for the oven

This recipe actually calls for a springform pan, which I don’t have. I used a 9-inch cake pan instead, buttered the heck out of it and used parchment on the bottom. I didn’t have any problems getting it to release from the pan. (THANK GOD because this has been my undoing any number of times.)

Here’s the finished product. Now to try and keep my paws off of it under after dinner.