Since I’ve been on a cake kick lately, I’ve been daydreaming non stop about what flavor to make next. I’ve been craving my favorite chocolate cake recipe and my fridge is fully stocked with raspberries so I knew I had to incorporate them into this cake. Next week I’m baking a cake for a birthday and thought today’s cake would be the perfect opportunity to practice a new decorating technique before I have to make the birthday cake!
I really took my time putting this cake together. I started it about 11am and finished it around dinner time. The most time consuming part was the frosting, not making the frosting, but decorating with the frosting. The cake itself only requires 2 bowls and a small pot, no mixer required.
Ombre is a style of decorating where you use several shades of the same color to frost your cake, beginning with the darkest and continue with lighter and lighter shades of your color until it becomes white. This cake being raspberry, I figured pink would be the best choice. I used Wilton Gel color pink, separated my frosting into four parts, thentinted my frosting three shades of pink and left one white.
The Petal Technique uses a round tip on your piping bag and a small spatula to create the effect. It’s a simple process, just very time consuming.
Since I’d never made a cake like this before, I did my homework and read several blogs about how to successfully create these looks on a cake. My favorite was from The Hungry Housewife. She posted a tutorial on her blog that demonstrated both the ombre and petal effect to decorate a cake. So, I watched this video, prepped my frosting and got to work!
I’m not going to include my step by step on how I decorated the cake, I’m going to let you read what The Hungry Housewife wrote… why reinvent the wheel. But, I will give you the recipe for the cake I made and the raspberry filling.
Let’s talk about the cake for a second…
Dark chocolate, rich, dense and moist. This is my FAVORITE chocolate cake recipe OF ALL TIME. Yah, it’s that good. And like I said before, no mixer required to make this cake… which makes it even better. I’ve used this recipe for cupcakes before, but I’d never transitioned it into a cake, but it preformed wonderfully in cake pans!
Raspberry filling… nothing better next to chocolate than this raspberry filling. Can I tell you a secret? Last night, after the cake was finished, I spooned this raspberry filling onto extra pieces of chocolate cake and shoveled it into my mouth. Actually, I made raspberry sandwiches with it… two pieces of cake filled with raspberry. Decadent. Heavenly.
A few things I realized during this cake that will make your cake making process a lot easier…
- PLAN AHEAD! Decide what colors you want to use, what cake flavors you want to use and go over all your recipes and tutorials before you begin. Be thorough so there are no surprises.
- Make sure you have all your tools ready. You really want to have enough bags with the same tip prepared and ready to go when you start piping. It will make this process 100x easier.
- Go slow. Take your time. Don’t rush it. I know I get excited making new things and sometimes rush… but really, take your time. Breathe and enjoy the process!
I really hope you try this cake for your next special occasion. Your friends will be super impressed. I’m even impressed with myself. :)
Chocolate Raspberry Cake
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake
Raspberry Filling
Vanilla Buttercream for filling
Vanilla Buttercream for icing
Instructions
Dark Chocolate Cake
Raspberry Filling
Buttercream (you'll use the same method to make both buttercreams)
To color the frosting:
To assemble the cake:
Petal Cake Frosting Technique
Nutrition Information
Amount Per Serving
Calories 0Total Fat 0g
Michael Gauthier
Wednesday 12th of May 2021
Is there supposed to be baking powder in the recipe as well?
Trish
Wednesday 2nd of November 2016
This cake is a failure and you really should take it down. I so wish I had read the reviews. I was inerested in the addtion of the coffee and wanted to try it, but the cake is for a party two days from now. Only two of the four layers would release from the pan and I used my tried and true shortening and flour. NEVER fails. This time it did. 10+ years of cake making. So VERY disappinted. Ladies and Gentlemen just use the box mix. This had the most beautiful batter EVER, but the cake is too weak to be removed from the pan. It's just too soft.
Betsy Eves
Thursday 3rd of November 2016
Sometimes some bakers aren't meant to be. Proper preparation of your cake pans is essential to ensuring cakes come out of the pan EVERY time. Shortening, flour AND parchment paper are key to cakes that come out of the pan every time. Maybe if you would have read that part of the comments BEFORE you made this cake and followed my advice, your cake would have come out of the pan. 10+ years of experience doesn't always make you a perfect baker. So no, I won't take this cake down... because I have made this cake 100+ times without issue and without it sticking to the pan. So yeah, happy baking Trish.
LaDonna
Saturday 17th of August 2013
Help! I'm trying to make this cake and every time I do it sticks to the pan, even after I grease and flour. What am I doing wrong? BTW, the cake, even in crumbles, tastes delicious =)
Betsy Eves
Saturday 17th of August 2013
Hi LaDonna! Have you tried putting parchment paper down on the bottom of the pan? Grease, parchment, flour. I do that every time and have no problems with sticking. Good luck!
Lucy
Wednesday 14th of November 2012
Raspberry filling sounds super amazing Must give it a try. Yummy!
brooklyn mama
Wednesday 10th of October 2012
did you see that some cooking school is using one of your ombre cake photos in a Facebook ad? I saw the photo and it actually grabbed my attention because it is so beautiful and eye catching. I wanted to get to the source and find out where the photo came from so did a google images search and voila, I found myself here. I love the tutorial, great job.
the company using the photo is called baking.associatedegree.us.com
just thought you might want to know
Betsy ~ @JavaCupcake
Wednesday 10th of October 2012
I had no idea. I'll check it out. THANK YOU for letting me know!