Askinosie Chocolate Raspberry-Buttermilk Cake

This is my photo-documentary of my test baking & final cake for the Christian County Fair Cake & Pie competition.  Last year I won first place with my chocolate cake – it was my first baking competition!  Since I love chocolate (and apparently, so did the judges) I thought I would use chocolate again somehow.  I still have some tweaks to do before I post the recipe, but let’s just say there are things involved like: lavender and lots of vanilla-fruity-nutty goodness.   This is a cake you want to eat nice & slow to let the flavors mingle & linger.  Don’t take the leftovers to the office because you definitely don’t want to rush it.  Take it nice and slow & fully appreciate it!  (I eat a small slice during Patrick’s naptime or after he’s in bed for the night…)

Askinosie Chocolate was so kind as to give me some of their single-origin chocolate (grown in Davao, Phillipines) for this competition.  I’ve saved a little bit to take to them on Monday to try, but I hope you can thank them too by going to their site & ordering some of their chocolate.   Anything you get will be good (I have pretty much tried them all,  lol).  Their white chocolate is also unlike any other and would be tasty in baking, although I’ve yet to try baking with it…mmm…

Warning: This cake is so pretty, I took a lot of pictures.  (Plus I also had Matt around to take some action shots for me, too!)

I found these tartlett tins at Goodwill for $1!!  They were probably like, “What on earth are these?  Let’s put them in a baggie and mark it at $1 since we have no idea.”  To be honest, I wasn’t totally sure what they were at first, either.  I had to think about it a long time in the store before I was mostly certain, and even then wasn’t 100% until I looked up what “tartlett tins” looked like.

 

Since this was a test version and I also wanted to use my tart tins, I made the recipe for two layers.  I used half the batter in the tartlett tins, then cut the single layer cake in half & stacked the halves.  It’s also good for small families like ours.  The final version will be all round, but you bake it or could cut it into any shape….

Ganache drizzled on….for the test batch I used Nestle dark chocolate chips, but I know it would be it is MUCH better with some Askinosie chocolate!  (My absolute favorite!  I still haven’t found another single-origin chocolate that tastes quite as good, and believe me, I have had a lot of chocolate, lol.  I just ordered a special edition Askinosie bar that had coffee beans sprinkled on it, and I am so excited to pick it up this week & taste it.  It’s like a chocolate dream come true!  *EDIT* It is, in fact, a coffee-chocolate lover’s dream come true.

When I told him not to touch….

Most adorable fat cheeks.  Ever.

I could not find fresh raspberries last week, but I found some this week!

The “bite” shot happened sooner than I would have liked….see below for details…

He stole my berries, licked the ganache, AND poked a fork all over it.  I thought about Photoshopping those parts to make it look prettier, but…eh, I kinda like the real life look.  It tells the story better.

 

Ok, I bet you are ready for the recipe, so here it is.  Notes & thoughts are afterward.

Askinosie Chocolate Raspberry-Buttermilk Cake

Ingredients

1 c. spelt flour
1 c. almond flour
1/2 c. raw sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt or other unrefined salt
1/2 c.  melted coconut oil or butter
2 Tbs Irish Whiskey
3 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 c. buttermilk (or milk or yogurt)
1/3 c. raw honey
1 lemon, juiced & zested.
1 tsp lavender flowers

Ingredients for the fruity & chocolate layers:

10-12 oz fresh or frozen raspberries
2 Tbs raw honey
2 tsp lemon juice
1 cup cream
8 oz. Askinosie Chocolate, chopped or broken into morsel-sized pieces  (Plus more for garnish, if desired.  Used here: Davao 77% cacao – fruity tones go well with this cake)
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions

1. Use real buttermilk or make your own (see Step 2).  First steep milk or buttermilk with lavender by placing it in a tea ball (or just strain the flowers out of the milk at the end).  Heat the milk over low/med-low heat until slightly warm.  You’ll probably smell the lavender scent, or you can taste test it.  Let cool.

2. To make “buttermilk:” Juice the lemon and add 2 Tbs of the juice to the cup of cooled milk.  Let sit for 10 minutes & it will curdle.

3. Mix spelt flour, almond flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

4. Create a “well” in the bowl with the dry mix and add eggs, buttermilk, oil, Irish Whiskey, vanilla, honey, and lemon zest.  Use a mixer on low speed until ingredients are just combined.

5. Preheat oven to 300 F.  Butter and flour two 9-inch, round cake pans (or whatever you’re using…a simplified version of this would be to do it all in a 9×13 pan & cut out squares).

6. Bake at 300 for approximately 25 minutes (for round 9-inch pans.  Probably around 14 minutes for tart tins.)  Let cool on wire racks for 15 minutes, then turn cakes out onto rack & cool completely.  Wrap & set in freezer for assembling later (unwrapped is fine if you’re assembling the cake immediately).

Directions for Raspberry jam layer:
1. If you don’t care for too many seeds, in a blender or food processor, puree a 10-12 oz. bag of thawed raspberries, or fresh ones if you have them in season.  You may have to add a tiny bit of water to puree them better.  Strain the seeds out.

2. If there is leftover lemon juice from earlier, add it to the puree.  Cook over med-low heat until it thickens.  (You can drizzle in some extra honey if you like.)

Directions for Ganache:
Be sure to halve this recipe if you are NOT doing a layer cake!  Or just refrigerate the extra ganache & turn it into truffles. 

1. Heat the cream over med-low heat, stirring almost constantly until it just starts to barely bubble.

2. Pour into a bowl over the chopped/broken chocolate pieces.  Let set for a minute.

3. Stir with a whisk until chocolate is smooth.  Add vanilla & blend.

4. Use immediately for thinner, pourable frosting that will be smooth on the cake, or wait until thick & spread over cake for a more textural look.

Assembling the Cake (as in the final version – pictures coming soon)

1. Take the cake layers out of the freezer (30 minutes is a good time to be in there; this makes it so much easier to maneuver the cakes!  If presentation is important to you, you can trim the edges of the cakes at this point if they turned out messy or uneven.)

2. Pour about 1/3 of the ganache over the cake.

3. Pour the raspberry jam over the ganache.  (Steps 3 & 4 are switched in the photos.)

4. Line the edge with whole raspberries (fresh are best; rinsed & dried)

5. Top with the second layer of cake.

6. Top with rest of ganache.

7. Garnish with a grouping of fresh raspberries & crumbled Askinosie chocolate pieces, or Askinosie cocoa powder.

Notes

WOW, I know that looks like a LOT of steps….and it is….but you know what I always say: Get creative & find a way to simplify it or make it your own (especially with assembling the cake – there are soooo many options!  Google Images is a great way to get ideas!)  I’d like to try cutting the layers in half like a bagel so  I’d have four thin layers to work with, then alternate raspberry jam and chocolate ganache layers.  And I’d like to try Askinosie’s white chocolate sometime!

I recommend preparing the raspberry jam and infusing the lavender into the milk/buttermilk ahead of time, just for time’s sake.

I originally got 10 oz of chocolate from Askinosie because that’s what I’d used with other, inferior chocolate from the grocery store.  However, after having experienced many of our own ganache-topped cakes over the past few years, Matt & I decided that with the Askinosie, the ganache didn’t have to be as thick as the other stuff.  It has so many more undertones & is so much more flavorful and dark that you just don’t need as much.  (This is going to sound SO Food Snob but I don’t care because I like good food:) So if you MUST, go with approx. 10 oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips.  I’ve tried four grocery store brands & they’re all about the same.  (Baker’s being the worst, although I didn’t know any better when I first started making my chocolate cake.)  Conveniently, 3 oz. happens to be the size of the bar that Askinosie sells, so you can get 3 bars and have about 1 oz leftover for garnish and/or nibbling.  Perfect.

I won second place in the Cakes division, for anyone wondering.  I was at a workshop all day so Matt actually took it for me & he reported back with the following: He got there a little later to check in the cake & suspects they tasted them in order of arrival; thus, my cake was probably last to be tasted.  Since we have really whittled down our sugar intake, including in baking, I tend to not make foods as sweet as other people would like.  Just gonna put this out there from personal observation: Most people consume way too much sugar & their palettes are adjusted to always having sweet things.  Some people may thus think that dark chocolate is too bitter.  To that, I have to say, “psh.”  If you are a true chocolate lover, you will FULLY appreciate this fine-quality chocolate used in this recipe.  This is top-of-the-line stuff!  Anyways, Matt brought me a bite of the cake that won….and you can ask me about it in person.  I’m happy with the results, and I hope the judges and anyone who went to the 4H building at the Christian County Fair got to enjoy some raspberry-chocolate bliss today! 

Advertisement