"…it pleases us"

As regular readers would well be aware, I have a huge sweet tooth and absolutely love baking. Family birthdays are an excellent excuse to spend some time in the kitchen making a sweet treat. On the weekend, it was my dad’s birthday and I offered to bake him a birthday cake of his choice. He had a specific request – something with chocolate, raspberries and cream – fair enough!

My first thought was to make a sponge cake, although personally I am not a huge fan of sponges myself – I think they can tend towards dryness at times. The other consideration when choosing a cake was to find a cake that would serve a crowd (15 adults) – hence the idea for a layer cake was born.

The recipe for the cake itself is based on a plain chocolate cake from Nigella’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess (I love that book) with a few tweaks. Nigella’s cake is actually a chocolate orange cake, which uses marmalade in the cake mixture. I substituted the marmalade for raspberry jam and converted it to spelt flour. I then turned it into a layer cake by making a double quantity of cake, cutting the two cakes to make four layers, then inter-spacing the layers with chantilly cream and fresh raspberries, and finally dousing the cake in a very wicked chocolate ganache.

The cake was very popular – the chocolate cake layers were quite dense, with a chewiness and berry flavour throughout thanks to the inclusion of the jam. The fresh raspberries in the centre of the cake were a real treat, adding a fresh, moist flavour burst when biting through the cake. While this cake was a little involved to make (and stressful when cutting through the layers) I will absolutely make it again. Due to its richness, we served tiny pieces and the cake fed all 15 adults with quite a bit leftover, some of which I sneakily ate for breakfast the next morning – yum!

Chocolate and raspberry layer cake

For the chocolate cake

Note: you will need two 8 inch springform round cake tins for this recipe. I made the cake mixture only to realise my second cake tin was missing, I ended up going next door and borrowing the neighbour’s cake tin!!

240g unsalted butter
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
880g raspberry jam (I didn’t realise I would need so much, and substituted half for strawberry jam (excess from the taste test) this tasted fine)
440g caster sugar
pinch of salt
4 eggs, beaten
300g plain flour (or if using spelt, 360g)
4 tsp baking powder (or if using spelt, 3 tsp)

For the chantilly creme

350ml cream
2 tbs caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

For the ganache

180g dark chocolate, chopped
125 ml cream

To decorate

250g fresh raspberries

Chocolate-raspberry cake

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F.
• Flour and butter your springform pans and put baking paper on the bottom to prevent sticking.
• Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan over low heat until almost completely melted. Add the chocolate.
• Leave chocolate and butter on the heat for a moment to get the chocolate melting, then take off the heat and stir until melted and smooth:

• Add the raspberry jam and stir in:

• Add the sugar, salt and eggs and stir until mixed.
• Sift in the flour and baking powder in batches and stir until incorporated. The mixture will be a little lumpy from the jam.
• Divide between your two cake tins:

• Bake for about 50 minutes – or until a skewer comes out clean. Keep an eye on the cakes and make sure you cook them long enough.
• Cool in tins, then turn the cakes out and let cool completely.
• Once completely cooled, cut each cake in half, to make four layers:

Note: you may notice the cake looks a little ‘wonky’ on the top edge – the neighbour’s cake tin turned out to be an inch smaller than mine, so I had to trim the larger cake. It ended up looking a bit messy. Definitely make this with 2 tins the same size to save yourself this hassle!

Creme chantilly

• Put the cream, sugar and vanilla extract in an electric mixer and beat until fairly stiff.

Assembly

• Place the first layer of the cake on the serving plate and spread a third of the cream on top:

• Place the next layer of the cake on top, spread a third of the cream on top and scatter with fresh raspberries:

• Place the next layer on top and spread the last third of the cream on top:

• Place the last layer of cake on the top:

Chocolate ganache

• Put chocolate and cream into a saucepan and heat gently. Stir until mixture is smooth:

• Beat in an electric mixture until cool and thick.

Assembly (continued)

• Arrange some strips of baking paper around the edges of the cake to keep it clean.
• Pour the chocolate ganache over the cake, dripping down the edges

• Use a palette knife to smooth the top and cover the sides of the cake (this is messy work!)

• Decorate with a ring of fresh raspberries on the top.

• Enjoy!

Here’s my breakfast the next day – yum!

Tags: birthday cake, chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate raspberry cake, chocolate raspberry layer cake, cream, layer cake, raspberry, spelt cake