I had to make a birthday cake with terrific WoW! factor for a terrific Frenchman, and I conceived of something red, white, and blue.

Inspiration came from Xanthe Clay who published the recipe for the most spectacular raspberry ripple cake in The Daily Telegraph. It was red and white at least – I thought I would introduce blue via the cake’s candles.

So far, so standard. WoW! factor was achieved by means of a flourishing use of ice cream wafers, dribbling raspberry syrup, and the raspberries themselves.

But, the really innovative aspect of this cake for me is the ice cream icing. Of course, I did a Google search, and I don’t think Mrs Clay invented this, but she’s certainly developed it and it’s a discovery. It’s a bit more stable than cream cheese icing but it’s not as solidly sugary as traditional butter icing is, and it does have a pleasing taste of ice cream!

Recipe for an ice cream icing cake cut with rascally raspberries

Serves about 16

Ingredients for the cake and syrup

• 1 x 360g/12 oz jar raspberry jam
• 2 lemons
• 1 orange
• 180ml/¾ cup vegetable oil
• 360g/1⅔ cups golden caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 700g/4⅔ cups plain flour
• 2 generous tbsps. baking powder

Ingredients for the ice cream icing

• About half a 460/500 ml tub of good quality ice cream – Häagen-Dazs for choice – at room temperature
• 250g butter (unsalted ideally)

Ingredients for decoration

• 50g/about 10 raspberries
• Ice cream wafers to decorate

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Line the bases, and oil and flour two 18cm/7” cake tins, three if you have them.
3. Make the syrup by mixing the raspberry jam with the juice of one lemon, and then straining the lot through a sieve.
4. Juice the orange and make it up with water to 800 ml/3¾ cups.
5. Add this to a large mixing bowl, together with the juice and zest of the second lemon, the vegetable oil, the sugar and the vanilla paste. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix well, until smooth.
6. Pour about a third of the batter into one of the cake tins and the rest into the second. Or pour about a third into each if you have three.
7. Drizzle three tablespoons of the raspberry syrup over each, marbling it through with the end of a spoon.
8. The thinner cakes will take about 40 minutes, and the thicker cake about an hour. When they are done a skewer will come out clean.
9. When they are done, leave them to cool in the tin and then turn out and leave to cool further on a wire rack. Cut the thick cake through with a bread knife to make a third layer.
10. Meanwhile beat the melted ice cream, the butter, the icing sugar and vanilla paste together to make this extraordinary icing.
11. Use about four tablespoons of the icing to sandwich one sponge layer to another, and repeat with the third layer.
12. Ice the top and sides of the cake. Dribble over the rest of the syrup, and decorate.