Chocolate Raspberry Cake
I’ve been planning to make a simple cake, one that would be beginner-friendly, not have too many steps, and that wasn’t a layer cake. Here it is!
The recipe
Yield: one cake
Time: 1 hour, plus cooling time
Ingredients
Cake:
2 c (420 g) sugar
1 ¾ c (270 g) flour
¾ c (75 g) cocoa
3 tbsp + 1 tsp (18 g) freeze-dried raspberry powder
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
½ c (110 g) vegetable oil
1 c (260 g) whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c (230 g) boiling water
Frosting:
1 c (220 g) sugar
1 c (260 g) whole milk
5 tbsp (50 g) flour
2 sticks (225 g) salted butter, room temperature
5 tbsp (24 g) freeze-dried raspberry powder
Instructions
Cake:
1. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 13 inch cake pan. Boil a little more than 1 cup of water.
2. Put all the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and blend on low speed until they’re well combined and look even in color.
3. Add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla extract and beat on medium speed until well combined.
4. With the mixer on low, add 1 cup of boiling water in a slow stream. Mix well on medium-low until fully incorporated and uniform (about 2 minutes), stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice.
5. Pour the cake batter into the greased pan and bake for 28–32 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs sticking to it.
6. Cool the cake completely before frosting.
Frosting:
1. Combine the sugar, milk, and flour in a small saucepan. Whisking constantly, cook over medium-low heat until the mixture boils and begins to thicken, 5-10 mins. Let it boil until the mixture becomes thicker than pudding, about a minute, and then remove it from the heat.
2. Pour the mixture into a heatproof bowl, place a piece of saran wrap directly on top of it to keep from forming a skin, and cool it in the refrigerator until it reaches room temperature, about 30 minutes.
3. When the flour mixture is cool, beat the butter in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment on high speed for about 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
4. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture one spoonful at a time, beating on medium speed, ensuring each spoonful is fully incorporated before adding the next.
5. Add the raspberry powder to the frosting and beat until fully incorporated. Add more to taste if you want a stronger flavor.
Notes and tips
Because this is a chocolate cake, the quality of your cocoa matters a lot. Invest in a good one. I use Droste, which you can easily find on Amazon as a three-pack. If you make this cake a few times, you’ll go through that three-pack quickly!
Make your own freeze-dried raspberry powder by crushing freeze-dried raspberries inside a plastic bag with a rolling pin.
When baking, use whole milk. The extra fat makes it taste better, and baked goods aren’t meant to be low-fat anyway.
You don’t even have to use a mixer for this recipe. A hand whisk and a large bowl work just as well!
The story
Don’t let the long ingredient list fool you. This cake is as easy as from-scratch cakes get! If you’re daunted by cakes, this is the one to start with. This cake is so moist that, unlike a vanilla one, it can tolerate a little overbaking and still taste delicious. However, the basic recipe isn’t mine. The Hershey’s “Perfecty Chocolate” Chocolate Cake is the best one out there, so I’ve just tweaked it a bit to make it a raspberry-forward cake. You can actually taste the raspberry in the cake itself without the chocolate overpowering it, which took some doing. And the frosting is my own recipe!
For you baking nerds out there, this cake is so moist because of the amount of cocoa powder and water. When cocoa powder is hydrated, it forms a gel, holding onto moisture while still providing structure to the cake. A chocolate cake can hold a lot more water than a vanilla one. This is also the reason that the vegan chocolate crazy cakes work and why you don’t see any vanilla ones.
If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you’ll remember my Raspberry Almond Shortbreads, which call for some freeze-dried raspberry powder in the frosting. And if you’ve made them, you, like me, have been cursed with this bag of random berries just floating in your pantry for months. Well, I have not forgotten you, so here’s a way to use them all up! (Except if you’re buying it from Target like I am, you’ll need more than one bag for this recipe, so you might be left with some in your pantry again… If that happens, I’m sorry.)
And a shameless plug for this recipe: one of my friends who does not like chocolate cake tried this one and I converted her.
Spread the snob
If you like this recipe, please recommend Confessions of a Cake Snob to someone you know! Share this newsletter with a friend, comment on the website, or bake it and let me know how it went for you. Email me with comments, things you’d like to see, and suggestions at confessionsofacakesnob@substack.com. I’m excited to hear from you!