Chocolate Galore!

Well, hello there readers. I am typing this sitting at my newly organized desk (another new years resolution--organize my desk). Yes, I have another obsession. Chocolate. I can not get enough of it right now. I love chocolate. When I came across this recipe (again from Orangette), I knew I had to make it. When the recipe for a chocolate cake suddenly appeared on my screen, I just knew I had to make it (Well, ok, the recipe did not just appear on my screen, I made it come up). This cake looked so good. And...not to mention ridiculously decadent. Yes, I know sounds good, right.

So, I picked up all of my ingredients from the store. And the butter. Yes, the butter. Do you remember when I cooked and blogged about a lot of French foods in a row? Well, this is another recipe that I think is French...cross my fingers. Anyways this recipe calls for French butter (one of the reasons I suspect that this is a French recipe). French butter is higher in fat which produces more air bubbles. This are good in a cake because the make the cake airy. But that being said, high fat butter is not the best for you--hence the name high fat butter, and you do not always want your cake to be airy. But for this cake you do.

Let me tell you how the cake turned out. OMG! This cake was good!  I mean deliciously, melt in your mouth, decadent, death by chocolate good!  The chocolate!  Oh! the chocolate. The top was like a brownie and the inside was nice and creamy. This was hands-down one of the best chocolate cakes I had ever tasted. And that is hard. I love my chocolate cakes from the box (aka Betty Crocker Mixes). I know you are surprised, but sometimes I go box!

Did I mention that this cake is named Winning-Hearts-And Minds Cake by Molly Wizenburg's friend Kate (Molly is the author of Orangette)? This one did truly win my heart.

October: Find-your-uncle-in-the-middle-of-the-night-eating-chocolate-cake-it-is-so-good Chocolate Cake

The first thing I did when I got to my beach house this summer, was to sit down with my new favorite cook book. The cookbook, which my aunt gave me for my birthday, is called "The Baker's Dozen Cookbook". It's an amazing cookbook with tried and true techniques as well as 135 delicious looking recipes.  Well, anyway in this book there are a couple of pages of pictures. I was looking at these pages of pictures and came across a picture of chocolate raspberry cake. This cake looked amazingly delicious and was screaming my name.  So, I decided to make it. 

Once I started looking at the recipe, I realized that it was going to be a big cake, and a lot more work than I expected. There were 4 different parts to the cake, so it was going to take a long time! 

All of my cousins (16...all younger than me!) have been wanting to help me make something this summer. (They all claim that they are chefs, but really they just want to get on the blog.)  Since this was such a big cake, I thought that this was a perfect time to ask my cousin, who had asked me first, to help me and together, we attacked this cake. 

Anyway, making the cake lasted over a span of a couple of days and no I do not mean I stayed awake over a couple of days to make this (I don't think I could have made it because these days I am so tired at the end of the day!).

I used fresh picked raspberries (you know my mom and blueberries!) and I seriously encourage you to do the same. The raspberries tasted fresh and they were ripe and juicy and not about to grow mold on them like some of the ones from supermarkets! The spongy chocolate cake! OMG!!!! It was so good. It was not too dense which was something I was worried about, but at the same time, it was not too light. On a scale of 1-10 of the sponginess I would rate it an 8. Chocolate cream filling...rich, creamy, all the good things about filling. Finally, seriously decadent chocolate ganache which is French for frosting...so not Betty Crocker. These main components made the cake so deliciously TDF (to die for)!! 

Once we started looking at the recipe, we found out that we did not have a spring form cake pan. We tried a bundt pan, but the cake didn't rise as high as it should, so we ended up cutting the cake in half to make a half of a cake. Even though the cake was small, it was delicious, I mean truly TDF! The raspberries really were a great mix with the chocolate. I loved this cake and hope you do too! 

Just 1 thing, make sure you have an abundance of time! 

BTW: I know who it was who ate my cake in the middle of the night! Father of C and godfather of N... or was it you father of hummer-loving son!!!

My finished cake! (before my uncle got to it!)

For this cake, you will need the cake recipe, a genoise recipe, a ganache recipe, and a glaze recipe. All of these recipes are included!