I usually have a theme each week for the recipes I blog, but not this week. I wanted to make a dessert, and there just isn’t one that fits with the Chimichurri Chicken Green Beans Skillet I just made. Chicken, green beans, and chimichurri sauce are delicious, just not for dessert. Not having a theme meant I could choose any dessert I wanted, and I decided on this Chocolate Raspberry Cake recipe. It’s been a while since I’ve made a cake, and I’m thinking summer berries and chocolate sound like a decadent combo.
This Triple Layer Chocolate Raspberry Cake is a SHOWSTOPPER! This recipe features three layers of moist raspberry chocolate cake, raspberry preserves, and rich chocolate frosting. Top with fresh raspberries for an extra lovely presentation.
The Ingredients
Since the cake and frosting are made from scratch, this recipe had quite a few ingredients. I had a few on hand, but I needed to top up the sugars, cocoa powder, and vanilla extract. I also had to buy the raspberries (fresh for garnish and frozen for the cake), raspberry preserves, eggs, dairy products. That put my grocery bill for this recipe at just over $46.
I know, I know, that’s an expensive cake, but I did have leftovers of several of the ingredients I bought: granulated and confectioners’ sugar, milk, cream, butter, eggs, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, and fresh raspberries.
The items I used up entirely were the frozen raspberries (12-ounce bag), sour cream (16-ounce tub), cream cheese (8-ounce block), and raspberry preserves (9.5-ounce jar). And I think I would have used an entire 8-ounce container of the cocoa powder if I didn’t have some on hand already (I had half a container on hand, bought another, and used half of that).
The Process
This recipe broke down into several parts:
- Making the cakes and frosting (1 hour 3 minutes)
- Cooling the cakes (40 minutes)
- Leveling, frosting and assembling the layers (9 minutes)
- Chilling the assembled cake (30 minutes)
- Frosting the top and outside of the assembled cake (5 minutes)
My total time was 1 hour 57 minutes, a good bit faster than the 3 hours 16 minutes listed. After I removed them from the pans, I chilled the cakes in my refrigerator for 30 minutes, and that saved me a ton of time. Also, my cake pans are easy release, so I didn’t need to line them with parchment paper.
This recipe wasn’t without some difficulties, though, but they were my fault. My cake pans are 8-inches, and the recipe clearly says to use 9-inch pans. I wrongly assumed I had the correct size, filled them nearly to the top because I had a lot of cake batter, and they overflowed. That created smoke and a lovely burnt smell that lasted for days. Ugh! It also added 20 minutes to the baking time because the cakes were so thick. The smaller pans would have worked better if I hadn’t overfilled them. I found out too late that 3/4 full is the rule of thumb.
Other than that hiccup, things went pretty smoothly. I remembered to drape a tea towel over my stand mixer when I mixed the powdered ingredients, and that cut down on the usual dust. Mixing flour and powdered sugar is so messy if you don’t have a built-in cover!
Tip: Does your cake stand have a cover? Mine doesn’t so I used my largest mixing bowl to cover the cake (6 quarts). It was much neater and more effective than plastic wrap or aluminum foil since it didn’t touch the cake and stick to the frosting 🙂
