Ingredients:

480g plain flour

280g caster sugar

4 x teaspoon baking powder

2 x teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

480g soya yogurt

180ml sunflower oil

2 x tablespoon golden syrup

2 x teaspoon vanilla extract

175g shelled pistachio nuts

4 x tablespoon freeze-dried raspberries

Finely grated zest of one lime

Decoration –

300g vegan butter

600g icing sugar

1 x teaspoon vanilla extract

30g fresh raspberries plus additional whole berries to decorate

2 x tablespoon vegan seedless raspberry jam

Method: 

Preheat oven to 180^oC and line and grease two deep 20cm/8-inch cake tins.

Put the nuts in a food processor and blitz until finely chopped. Sift the flour into a large bowl with the sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and mix with a spoon. Make a well in the middle. Put the yogurt, vanilla extract, sunflower oil and golden syrup into another bowl and mix with a spoon until fully combined. Add to the dry ingredients and fold through with a wooden spoon or spatula until the ingredients are just combined and smooth. Add the chopped pistachios, lime zest and dried raspberries to the batter but don’t over mix! Divide the mixture evenly between the two cake tins and bake in your preheated oven for 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before removing and cooling completely on a wire rack.

Once the cakes have cooled completely, trim the tops to make them level. Make the buttercream by placing the vegan butter in a bowl with the vanilla extract. Add just a couple of large spoons of icing sugar at first and whisk with a handheld electric whisk until combined. Then add the remaining icing sugar in small amounts and whisk until the buttercream is smooth and spreadable. Add a little water or plant milk if necessary.

Place the cakes on a cake board and sandwich them together using around a third of the buttercream (the bottom side of the top cake should be facing upwards). Crumb coat the cake using another third of the buttercream and then chill in the fridge for 15 minutes (a crumb coat is a thin layer of icing used to seal crumbs onto the surface of the cake, providing an additional base for icing. Add lots of small amounts of icing in intervals around the cake, or pipe lines of icing around it, and then use a palette knife to smooth the icing around the whole cake). When the cake has chilled, use the remainder of the buttercream to give the cake a second layer. Smooth and remove any excess. 

Mash 30g of raspberries to a pulp and then mix with the raspberry jelly. Smear blobs of the mixture at random intervals around the cake, then smooth and remove any excess to get a two-tone effect. Decorate the top of the cake with fresh raspberries.