Fancied Up Chocolate Raspberry

I have a 14 year old nephew that's kind of a foodie. He wants to be a chef. But he also likes a lot of different foods so when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday and he said the same chocolate/raspberry one I'd made for another friend before, I wasn't challenged. It was a smidge disappointing. So I went in search of at least prettying it up. I found a beautiful picture on flickr of a chocolate raspberry cake that I've, regrettably, lost the link to. I attempted to duplicate it and didn't quite succeed but my nephew liked it a lot so that was my main goal.

The thing I didn't prepare for was how time consuming every bit of this cake was. From the ganache to cutting the three layers to making the raspberry filling then chocolate buttercream then whipped cream THEN white chocolate marble decoration. so much work. But I'm glad it came out nice. And it was just as yummy as chocolate and raspberry always are. Win!

And it's six layers with three ganache fills and two raspberries. Mmmm!

More Halloween!

Every year, my office puts on a Halloween party and they usually ask for desserts to be contributed. This year they're doing a dessert contest but I was just excited to make something creepy. I saw this cake on I Am Baker and thought it was AWESOME so I went about trying to replicate.

She mentions she uses Americolor for the buttercream coloring but I couldn't get my hands on it before the due date so I cheated (again) and used the Wilton bottle of black icing. Now, the legs, on hers, are red and almost gel-looking so I was stumped. I bought the little red gel bottle and that was way too bright. I added black coloring to it and it plunged into darkness; too dark! So I ended up using the leftover red Wilton bottle icing from the little vampire cupcake fangs of last week! Added a little black to darken it and voila! Kind of reddish/black legs!

Thanks to this from I Am Baker to this awesomely creepy design!!