Cake!
What did I do today?
I've volunteered to make angelus7988's birthday cake this year, for the joint party his family is throwing for him and a relative who has the same birthday. Since my cake plan was a little ambitious, I decided to try a small-scale trial run ahead of time, to work out all the kinks. Here's what we're looking at...
It starts out with a layer of flourless chocolate cake. I've made this particular recipe before, for the birthday of another friend (who shall remain nameless unless she chooses to appear in the comments), so I know it's amazing. For her cake, I used this great bittersweet chocolate that I got from King Arthur Flour, but angelus7988 likes his chocolate a little milder, so I used a little of the bittersweet and made up the rest with chocolate chips. Then came a layer of raspberry preserves, followed by a layer of chocolate ganache. The second layer of cake was devil's food, with raspberry preserves swirled through the batter. The frosting was an Italian buttercream with the same raspberry preserves added to make it raspberry-flavored. A generous quarter-cup of preserves in a half-batch of frosting gave it only a subtle flavor, so I may need to invest in raspberry flavoring when I make the "real" cake. The cake was garnished with fresh(ish, which is what the grocery store had) raspberries. I definitely want to plan a trip to Lyman Orchards a day or two before I make the "real" cake. Here are a couple more pictures:
I think it turned out pretty well, but tomorrow will be the taste test, which is the most important thing. (And by "tomorrow" I mean later today, because it's 4:30am what's wrong with me why am I still awake and talking about cake of all things goodnight.)
I've volunteered to make angelus7988's birthday cake this year, for the joint party his family is throwing for him and a relative who has the same birthday. Since my cake plan was a little ambitious, I decided to try a small-scale trial run ahead of time, to work out all the kinks. Here's what we're looking at...
It starts out with a layer of flourless chocolate cake. I've made this particular recipe before, for the birthday of another friend (who shall remain nameless unless she chooses to appear in the comments), so I know it's amazing. For her cake, I used this great bittersweet chocolate that I got from King Arthur Flour, but angelus7988 likes his chocolate a little milder, so I used a little of the bittersweet and made up the rest with chocolate chips. Then came a layer of raspberry preserves, followed by a layer of chocolate ganache. The second layer of cake was devil's food, with raspberry preserves swirled through the batter. The frosting was an Italian buttercream with the same raspberry preserves added to make it raspberry-flavored. A generous quarter-cup of preserves in a half-batch of frosting gave it only a subtle flavor, so I may need to invest in raspberry flavoring when I make the "real" cake. The cake was garnished with fresh(ish, which is what the grocery store had) raspberries. I definitely want to plan a trip to Lyman Orchards a day or two before I make the "real" cake. Here are a couple more pictures:
I think it turned out pretty well, but tomorrow will be the taste test, which is the most important thing. (And by "tomorrow" I mean later today, because it's 4:30am what's wrong with me why am I still awake and talking about cake of all things goodnight.)