We had a birthday in our family this week. Even though I wasn't attending the celebration, I was charged with making the cake, you know how that goes?
And so I baked Annabel Langbein's "Ultimate Chocolate Cake" from The Free Range Cook. I decided that I'd only make one layer, so used the surplus batter for a few cupcakes.
That way I could test that I liked the flavour of the cake with my improvised raspberry cream cheese icing before I found myself overcommitted.
To make the icing I combined 200 grams of cream cheese with 100 grams of butter, both softened. Then mixed in 2 cups of icing sugar, whipping it all with an electric mixer until quite smooth. After this I added the "secret ingredient": Fresh As freeze dried raspberry powder. What is great about this powder is that it adds both raspberry flavour and natural colour.
Suffice it to say that I need a cake decorating class, my work isn't going to be winning any prizes. The Cake Boss would say that my piping needs work, and I won't be winning Cupcake Wars either!
The cake looks particularly atrocious, I apologize. (Topped with freeze dried raspberries and chocolate chips, set on piped blobs. I just got carried away, and in a bad way.) In my defense I'll say that my target audience was little girls, otherwise everyone else just wanted it to taste good.
Bottom line: this tasted REALLY GOOD! The combination of chocolate cake with naturally flavoured raspberry cream cheese icing was somewhat inspired. Next time I'll try to make it look better, I really will....maybe also not quite so pink.
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