Thursday, January 30, 2014

Three Layer Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Buttercream


Holy crap.

This cake is so beautiful I can't even.

It's been way too long since I've blogged, and by "way too long" I don't mean "I haven't baked in a month." 

I have, in fact, been baking every week this last month. I started my very own service baking project and taught kids how to bake once a month, for free, so I've been quite busy preparing for that! You can check out my experience here: http://www.racheltamismad.blogspot.hk.


Okay, where was I?

Oh right, cake. 

So yes, I made a three layer cake because I was watching Masterchef Junior on Hulu and they were making three layer cakes. I mean, why not? Just because it's nobody's birthday nor is there a special occasion doesn't mean I can't make a nice layered cake. Just saying. Hashtag truth.


I swear, this cake made me so proud. Proud times a billion. I can't even begin to tell you how stoked I am that this cake turned out perfectly. It looked great, but tasted even better. Yes, I am eating a huge slice right now while I'm blogging. But hey, don't judge.

To be honest with you, the cake looks harder than it actually was. All you need is your standard chocolate cake ingredients for the sponge, an easy peasy chocolate frosting recipe, and a super simple raspberry buttercream recipe. If you've got all of that, you're good to go.


This cake is so perfect the pictures don't even do it justice.

It's so easy I don't think it's fair, either.

Let's talk about the chocolate sponge recipe first. I don't think it matters what recipe you use, but I used Hummingbird Bakery's Brooklyn Blackout Cake recipe. The original recipe yields three 8-inch rounds, but I baked the batter into 6-inch rounds and got 3 sponges. Weird. Anyhow, though, as long as you go for a trusty chocolate cake recipe, you're good to go. It doesn't really matter how much batter you get because you can always make more or less layers. Of course, a 3-layered cake looks more stunning than a boring 2-layered cake, but whatevs.


The chocolate frosting recipe isn't your ordinary one. There's no whipped butter involved. Just plain melted butter, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and milk. Again, I see no need in using a specific recipe, so just go ahead and use your favorite! 

The raspberry buttercream is what made me so sure that this cake was gonna taste amazing. The original recipe recommended using fresh raspberries, but because Hong Kong is an extremely un-baker-friendly place to be, fresh raspberries are insanely expensive and cannot be found everywhere. Frozen raspberries, however, are much cheaper and can keep longer, so I opted to use that. I simply pureed the thawed raspberries and whipped them in with the butter and sugar. The shade of pink is gorgeous.


As I was looking through the photos it also occurred to me that this would make for an excellent gender reveal cake. Not that I know anyone who would need one at the moment, but hey, please remind me in 10 years. One of my friends also commented that if I tinted the buttercream a different color (orange), it'd be a good representative for our house team! Yay for inspirational *ahem* friends!


So that's basically the jist of this whole cake!

Here's another thing: When you frost the cake, I'd say do the top first (the pink) because if you make a mistake, you can easily cover up the sides with brown since you're gonna frost the sides later with chocolate frosting anyway. You can't cover up the brown with the pink, but you can cover up the pink with the brown. Also, to ensure a nice, thick layer of buttercream in between the cake layers, I suggest using a piping bag and a turn table. Those things come in handy.


I'm not enclosing a cake or chocolate frosting recipe because those are up to you. Really. But if you'd like to use the ones I did, go look up the Hummingbird Bakery Brooklyn Blackout Cake recipe for the cake. I have no idea where I found the chocolate frosting, but something like "easy chocolate frosting" on Google took me there. 

The raspberry buttercream (queen of the show) can be found here

Now while I go stalk Carrie Underwood and Demi Lovato on Youtube because they're both so perfect……

Happy Baking (and Chinese New Year)!
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