Raspberry and coconut sponge recipe

I’ve spent the last few days wondering whether it is frivolous to give you a cake recipe at a time like this. But I’ve finally come to the conclusion that, actually, it’s probably more important than ever. Baking is a source of comfort and joy, both for those doing the baking, and for the recipients, and to willfully lose something like that when we face uncertainty and challenges, when many of our other sources of comfort and joy have been at least temporarily restricted, is sad. Having a simple cake recipe up your sleeve is reassuring – a taste of normality.

I’ve gone for a cake which relies on store cupboard staples, one which you might recognise from school dinners: raspberry and coconut traybake. It’s straightforward, and doesn’t require any fancy ingredients: it’s essentially a pound cake, made up of equal quantities butter, flour, eggs and sugar. It’s then decorated with simple long-life staples: jam and desiccated coconut. Thanks to the panic-buying that has happened, the butter, eggs and flour that we have taken for granted are harder to come by. So we might need to be a little more inventive. But I want you to feel confident that you can use what you have to engineer that succour and satisfaction that baking should bring.

Unlike with cooking, it can be tricky with baking to substitute ingredients here and there willy-nilly without affecting the overall success of the dish. In baking, the balance of ingredients matters; you can’t muck about with the science. Changes do make a difference: they affect the colour, the texture, the taste and the shape of the final cake. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t implement some of those changes and produce a competent and delightful cake. So please be reassured that you can switch up the butter for margarine or dairy-free spread; most sugars will work in place of the caster – light brown, dark brown, granulated, even demerara will work – and you can use an extra 3.5