Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan and line three 8"/20cm tins with parchment paper, and leave to the side.
Beat together your butter and sugar for 3-4 minutes until light and fluffy!
Add in your self raising flour, eggs and lemon zest and beat again for a couple of minutes until smooth
Try not to over beat - mix until it comes together and is smooth.
Add in your raspberries and fold through - Split the cake mix between the three tins.
Once in the tins, bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until baked through. I check my cake is baked by using a skewer, and listening carefully to see if it bubbles! Because of the fruit, this can often take a bit longer!
Once baked, leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Buttercream
To make the buttercream, make sure your butter is at room temperature.
Beat the butter on its own for 3-4 minutes, I use the paddle attachment.
Once the butter is nice and supple, add the icing Sugar in 1/2 at a time, and beat fully before adding any more in.
Add in the lemon, and beat again for 3-4 minutes until it's all come together.
Decoration
Get your first cake onto your chosen plate and spread/pipe over a third of the buttercream.
Add on a few tablespoons of jam and spread.
Add on your second cake and spread/pipe the second third of the buttercream on top.
Finally add on your third sponge and pipe the rest of the buttercream on!
Decorate with fresh raspberries, freeze dried raspberries, lemon zest and so on! Enjoy!
Notes
This cake will last for 3 days at room temperature, in a cake box.
I use fresh raspberries, but you can use frozen if need be - can make the cake take longer to bake though due to moisture.
If you want to bake a two layer version use...
250g butter/sugar/flour and 5 medium eggs with the zest of 1 lemon with 150g raspberries.
Use 200g butter/400g icing sugar for the buttercream with the juice of 1 lemon!