Saturday 17 March 2012

Little Bear's Raspberry Mallow Pie



Oh! This is SO delicious!

Today Little Bear made this pie as part of our special St. Patrick's Day meal (I am 1/4 Irish, so it's nice to have an excuse to celebrate this!). The pie didn't turn out how we were expecting it to (we thought it was going to be a CAKE), but we were delighted with the results, nevertheless! We had found online a recipe for raspberry mallow cake, which we adapted slightly, but were still expecting more of a dry, sponge cake that could be iced. However, as Little Bear prepared it, she said that she thought it was too moist to be a cake (as in the sort that you ice) but would be rather, a pudding or pie. When I saw the raw ingredients, I had to agree! She was baking it in a 9 x 13 inch pan, and it did look pretty, before it went in the oven, all pink and white and red. But it was far too liquid to become a cake. We decided to watch and wait, and how glad we were that we did! Here is how Little Bear made her pie ...

All you need to make this wonderful dessert are the following ...

A packet of raspberry jelly (Jello).
A large box of, ideally, white cake mix (although we looked, we couldn't find this in the supermarket, though I am sure it would be wonderful with the vanilla flavour of the marshmallows and the sweet raspberries, not to mention such a pretty colour. Instead, we used 2 yellow sponge cake mixes which was all the supermarket had. They were in tiny packages so I got 2 instead of 1. Check the extra ingredients you'll need to make the cake mix - we needed 4 eggs and 6 tablespoons water). Of course, you could just make a simple Victoria sponge from scratch, but sinse my daughter was making this and not me, this was what she asked for.
1 box frozen raspberries
1 packet marshmallows

1. Start off by making the jelly according to the instructions. Add the frozen raspberries to it and put to one side whilse you assemble the rest of the dish.
2. Snip the marshmallows into pieces (you could use mini ones instead, but the large ones are much cheaper, here in England). A hint - wet the scissors to keep them from sticking to the marsmallows.
3. Place marshmallows in the bottom of a greased, lined 9 x 13 inch pan. Little Bear pointed out how glad she was that she'd remembered to line the pan as well as grease it, when it came to serving it up. It would have been very sticky otherwise!
4. Now make up cake mix according to packet instructions.
5. Pour the cake over the marshmallows.
6. Pour the raspberry jelly mixture over the cake mixture. It will look terrible, but don't worry! The oven is going to work wonders on it!
7. Place pan on a baking tray and put in a moderately hot oven on the centre shelf.
8. In our fan oven this took easily 55 minutes. Little Bear covered it over with foil about halfway through - don't do it sooner than this, or it will stick to the cake and you'll lose the delicious crisp topping.
9. It is done when the centre is firm but a knife inserted is still sticky.

This really is the same as an "impossible pie" - in point of fact, we make a chocolate version of this, which everyone adores. It is really quite simple. As the mixture bakes, the marshmallows rise to the top, and the jelly and raspberries sink to the bottom (as Little Bear pointed out, we are not really sure why you don't add them in that order instead, but so. That is how an impossible pie gets its name!). When it comes out of the oven, you have a light sponge cake with a crisp, chewy baked marshmallow topping, and underneath a delicious, thick raspberry sauce. It is quite light, and the sauce is surprisingly, not too sweet. To finish this off to perfection, we all agreed that raspberry ripple ice cream would be wonderful. We didn't have any (and given the number of helpings we all ate, I am not sure this was such a bad thing) but another time, we all decided that raspberry ripple ice cream was the way to go! This was so delicious - I know we'll be having it again! It would make a wonderful early Autumn dessert, to follow our Sunday tea.

Thank you Little Bear! Your sweet dish was as sweet as you are!