Chocolate Valentine’s Day Cake with Raspberry White Chocolate Icing

Roopa

I mostly see Valentine’s day as an excuse to bake things and decorate in an obnoxiously pink fashion. I have been baking the same chocolate cake/cupcake recipe for ages, because it’s nice to bake something that you know will turn out well. I wanted to try something new, so I was creeping around for non-heart Valentine’s themed cakes. I got inspired by this Bavarian Torte (but sadly don’t have a 9″ springform pan), and decided to try emulate the appearance using a different cake recipe.

CHOCOLATE CAKE (aka Choco Choco birthday cake from Sweetapolita)

INGREDIENTS

2-¾ cups cake flour
¼ cup cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
4 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup (220g) packed brown sugar
1-½ tsp. vanilla
2 cups sour cream
145g dark chocolate
2-¼ (260g) sticks unsalted butter

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350F, and line and grease 2 8″ cake pans.
Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, combine eggs, sugars, and vanilla until fluffy.
Melt chocolate and butter together (I used a microwave).
Let chocolate cool slightly, and add into sugar mixture at low speed.
Alternate adding flour mixture and sour cream in three parts, starting and ending with flour mixture. Don’t over mix.*
Spread the batter evenly into 2 pans (I use a scale).
Bake cakes for 35 – 45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cakes cool for 10 – 15 minutes, then invert onto cake racks.

It makes a LOT of batter. I mixed in the flour and sour cream by hand.

My horrendous oven. There was no rotating of these cakes.

But they still turned out! Success!

RASPBERRY WHITE CHOCOLATE ICING

INGREDIENTS

1 cup raspberries*
3 tbsp. granulated sugar
190g (just over ¾ cup) unsalted butter, softened
100g white chocolate chips, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
3-4 cups icing sugar
pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS

Put raspberries and granulated sugar on a saucepan over medium low heat and stir until raspberries have formed a puree.**
In a stand mixer, combine butter and white chocolate chips thoroughly. Add vanilla.
Add in raspberry puree once it has cooled down – I stuck it in the fridge for a few minutes – and mix well.
Mix in icing sugar and salt until icing reaches desired texture.***

* I used fresh raspberries, but I’m sure frozen raspberries would work fine.

** You could use a sieve to remove the seeds. I don’t own a sieve, and I also kind of like the seeded look. Also, the original puree directions are here.

*** This is a pretty runny icing, similar to cream cheese icing. I didn’t do any piping with it so I was fine with that.

WHIPPING CREAM

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tsp. vanilla
2 tbsp. granulated sugar

DIRECTIONS

Beat heavy cream with a hand mixer until soft peaks form.
Add sugar and vanilla, and beat again until stiff.

ASSEMBLY

As you can probably imagine, I have a lot of decorating supplies. However, they are mostly in Edmonton. My icing capabilities were sadly limited by the absence of my turntable and large offset spatula. I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out though, and it tastes pretty spectacular.