Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Buttercream

I used my old standby chocolate cake recipe for this one, but doubled it (done for you below) and baked it in two pans. I put a small amount of raspberry buttercream between the layers, along with some flattened fresh raspberries. (I first arranged them nicely, but it left too much space between the layers for the amount of icing I wanted to use, so took them back off and squished them. You could use jam here, but I wanted the tartness, not more sweetness in the filling. Sitting here, I am thinking I could have just mixed the raspberries in with the buttercream for the middle layer, but apparently that did not occur to me at the time). I topped the cake with the rest of the buttercream and decorated it with meringues, raspberries and chocolate.

Chocolate Cake

3 cups sifted flour
6 Tbsp. cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. salt
10 Tbsp. oil
2 Tbsp. vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups cold water

Sift dry ingredients together. Combine water, oil, vinegar and vanilla and mix into the dry ingredients. Spoon into two 9″ round cake pans and bake for 30 minutes at 350F.

Filling:
170 grams raspberries

I put this on top of the layer of buttercream to go between the layers of cake.

Raspberry Buttercream

1 1/2 cups soft butter
4 cups icing sugar
170 grams raspberries
4 Tablespoons cream (approximately)
1 tsp. vanilla

Make raspberry pulp by squishing raspberries through a strainer to remove the seeds. You will get about 6 tablespoons of pulp. If you end up with more pulp, use it, and just add less cream later.

Whip together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla and raspberry pulp. Add cream small amounts at a time until the icing is the consistency you want for spreading. Spread the icing on the bottom layer, with the extra raspberries for filling). Add the top layer and finish icing the cake.

Chocolate decorations

2 oz. dark baking chocolate

Choose a simple design to copy and put it under parchment paper. Melt 2 oz. of chocolate and put into a piping bag with a small, round tip. Pipe onto the parchment paper, following the design underneath. Put parchment paper on a sheet pan and refrigerate until the chocolate is firm. Remove from paper. Keep in the fridge until you are ready to use them.

Meringues
I posted the recipe for the meringues last week and they can be found here.