My sister's favorite birthday cake is a yellow layer cake with chocolate frosting, so that's what she got for her birthday celebration this past weekend (take a wild guess how old she is!). This year, however, she wanted the same cake, but with raspberry filling in the middle. I've made this cake (minus the filling) out of store bought boxes many times before, but this year I made it from scratch. My kitchen was a disaster when I left Brooklyn to go home to Long Island for the weekend. That's what you get when you frost a cake after a couple vodka sodas ... chocolate frosting everywhere.
This cake is a cross between a Smitten Kitchen recipe (the cake), and two separate Martha Stewart recipes for the chocolate frosting and the raspberry filling. Here goes ...
Ingredients (the cake)
4 cups plus 2 tablespoons cake flour (not self-rising) <~~~ I didn't research exactly what this meant. I used regular, all purpose flour. I did get 2 slightly higher than normal cakes, but they were fine)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups buttermilk, well-shaken
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line with circles of parchment paper, then butter parchment. Or you can spray the pans with cooking spray or butter/flour the pans.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
3. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric or stand mixer at medium speed until fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping down any mixture stuck along the side of the bowl. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture will look curdled... I didn't think so though). Add flour mixture in three batches, mixing until each addition is just incorporated.
4. Spread batter evenly into cake pans. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 35-40 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in pan then invert upside down onto a baking rack. Cool cakes completely.
Raspberry Filling
5 ounces frozen raspberries, thawed and drained
1/4 cup raspberry preserves
Chocolate Frosting (this recipe is doubled to cover the cake, but if you halve it, it will make enough for 12 cupcakes)
1 cup plus 4 tablespoons sugar
1 cup heavy cream
2 1/2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1. Place sugar and cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce
heat to medium and simmer, without stirring, about 5 minutes.
2. Remove saucepan from heat and stir in chocolate until melted. Stir in butter and vanilla until well combined. Chill, stirring occasionally, until cooled completely. (Stick in the fridge if you want, but definitely stir once in a while!
Put it all together ...
1. Spread raspberry layer over top of one cake (placed upside down) and put second cake (also upside down) on top of raspberry layer. (I didn't do this but some chocolate frosting spread in between the layers with the raspberry might be nice too).
2. Cover entire cake with chocolate frosting.
3. Top with some fresh raspberries if you like.
4. Put in fridge and go to sleep.
It was AWESOME. The cake and my sister making it :)
ReplyDelete