Chocolate Raspberry Forest Cake

This ain’t no Black Forest Cake recipe. Just saying, before you freak out…

‘Cause anytime I tell someone I Black Forest Cake I’m met with horror and disgust. Am I really the only thirty-something in North America who will admit to loving Black Forest Cake? Hands up if you’re with me… *Crickets*

Anywho, let’s move on. But before we do I need to warn you: this is one heckuva multi-layered, multi-step cake. Give yourself some time.

I decided to make this for the holidays and it’s a good thing I started a few days early because there is no way I would have completed this in one day, or even two days.

I wanted to try this for Christmas as it would be a refreshing alternative to those typical flavours we encounter over the holidays: pumpkin, spice, peppermint, peppermint.

And to be brutally honest, I just wanted to make those chocolate trees against the white buttercream backdrop. But I will admit now, after making this cake, that the recipe for the ganache, the buttercream, and the coulis were all on point. I felt the cake to be a tad on the dry side but that might just be my perfectionism talking. And the cake might not have stacked as well had it not been so dry.
Here’s the recipe.

Substitutions: I followed almost everything to the tee, except I used semi-sweet chocolate instead of dark purely because I had already purchased a lot of semi-sweet chocolate. The recipe allows for using frozen raspberries or strawberries but I used raspberries. If I were to do this over again, I would probably use the dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet because I like my chocolate dark and complex.

Would I make this again? Probably not and for no other reason other than the fact this cake was massive. I cut about 10 massive slices from it and I still had enough left over for another 20. But if I am hosting a party of 30 or more, there is no chance that I would spend so many hours on one small element.

Grade: Four stars out of five. After all, it is lovely to look at and also remarkably tasty. but I do suspect that without the raspberry coulis, this cake may have been a too-dry dud.