A VERY BERRY CHOCOLATE CAKE
September 11, 2016
A few weeks ago, we were asked by a friend to make a cake for another friend for the first weekend in September. As usual we took to Pinterest to put together some ideas for the cake. We wanted something that looked really impressive but was also quite simple to make (there isn't that much space for cake making in our static caravan where we have lived for the summer).
We immediately knew that this style of cake would be perfect for the birthday boy! We decided to do the bottom tier as a chocolate cake, and the top tier as a plain vanilla cake. They are filled with a delicious, chocolate buttercream and raspberries soaked in Chambord. The cake is decorated with chocolate shards and a variety of berries which we think looks pretty amazing, if we do say so ourselves!
Here is how to make the cake for yourself...
Ingredients:
For the cake...
Bottom tier: (9inch)
10oz butter
10oz caster sugar
5 eggs
8oz self-raising flour
2oz cocoa powder
2tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla essence
Top tier: (8inch)
6oz butter
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
5oz self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla essence
For the buttercream...
14oz butter
28oz icing sugar
5tbsp cocoa powder
For the filling...
1 punnet raspberries
2tbsp chambord
For decoration...
200g bar of milk chocolate
200g bar of dark chocolate
1 punnet of raspberries
1 punnet of strawberries
1 punnet of blackberries
1 punnet of blueberries
a few sprigs of red currants
Preheat your oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas mark 6 and line your cake tins with greaseproof paper.
We used 2 of the 9 inch cake tins for the bottom cakes and then cooked the top tier as one in a 8 inch cake tin and then cut the cake in the half.
Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then, add in the eggs, vanilla essence and baking powder and combine. Fold in the self-raising flour and cocoa powder until you have a smooth batter.
For the top tier, use the exact same method as above just without the cocoa powder.
Divide the bottom tier chocolate cake mixture equally into to 9 inch cake tins (or leave half of the mixture in the bowl if you need to reuse the cake tin for the second cake).
Pour the whole of the vanilla cake mixture into the 8 inch cake tin and place the cakes into the oven.
We baked the two chocolate cakes for 30 minutes and then the single vanilla cake took a little longer at 40 minutes. Check that your cakes are cooked by checking an inserted skewer comes out clean.
For the buttercream, beat together the butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder. You can add a bit more icing sugar if you want to thicken it.
Place a punnet of raspberries in a bowl along with the chambord and mush them up a little using a fork.
Time to start building the cake! Place the bottom tier onto the cake board, and spread on a generous layer of buttercream.
Evenly place half of the raspberries and Chambord on top of the buttercream, then place the second layer of cake on top. Repeat the buttercream and raspberry steps for the vanilla cake.
Cover the two cakes in buttercream; starting by filling in the gaps between the cake layers, then covering the whole cake evenly. Leave the first layer of buttercream to dry as you make the chocolate for the sides. Don't worry too much about making the buttercream smooth as you will cover it all with chocolate and berries! We gave the cakes a second layer of buttercream when we were ready to stick the shards on so they would stick to the wet buttercream.
To make the chocolate shards we started by tempering the chocolate, this makes it shiny and also means that it doesn't melt at room temperature! We followed these instructions on Youtube as this was our first time tempering chocolate. You can do this without tempering the chocolate but we recommend investing in a thermometer, especially if you are interesting in baking, you can get your hands on one fairly inexpensively online!
Once your chocolate is melted pour a thick stripe onto some greaseproof paper and spread it out roughly with a spatula. You will need to measure the size of your cakes to make sure you make them tall enough. We made around 6 strips as it's better to have too many in case some of them break! If you have tempered your chocolate you can just leave the chocolate out at room temperature to set, ours probably only took about half an hour.
Once the chocolate is set just roughly snap it into pieces. At this stage we did our second layer of buttercream, ready to stick the chocolate on!
Work your way around the cake covering all the sides with the shards of chocolate, until you have covered all of the buttercream.
Take all of your berries and generously fill in the top of the cakes, and then you are done. We also placed a few berries on the board for a little added decoration.
We were really happy with how the cake turned out and we think it is definitely one of the most exciting and dramatic looking cakes we have made. The birthday boy and all of our friends (and the whole of the bar they were in), really enjoyed the cake and said that it tasted amazing!
You could always make this cake as just a single tier for less extreme cake that is still really impressive. We think this cake would be perfect centre piece for a dinner party, and we will definitely be making it again!
Thank you so much for reading this post!
We really hope you enjoyed it and are considering making the cake yourself.
September is the start of a lot of family birthdays for us, so make sure to keep an eye out on our blog for lots more exciting cakes.
To make sure you never miss a post you can follow us on Bloglovin', Instagram and like our Facebook page 'Sharkett Sisters'.
See you soon,
Love, Antonia and Imogen x
