Chocolate Raspbery Cream Torte Recipe

My first attempt at baking this cake was a total fail. The second was not great, but better! A few people asked me for the recipe, so here we go! This is not super specific because I tend to make things up as I go along.

The cake still didn't come out quite perfect because I still didn't have a spring form pan. (I just borrowed a standard round from Sarah.) But it was much better than the first attempt.


CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY TORTE  RECIPE

Ingredients
Dark Chocolate Cake Mix (I use Duncan Hines Devil's Food)
Heavy Whipping Cream (2 cartons of the standard size)
Pint of Fresh Raspberries
Raspberry Jam
A good quality dark chocolate (I use ghiradelli)
Round cake pan

I use a standard chocolate cake mix to start. I don't feel it's worth the effort to actually make the cake part from scratch, especially considering how much work the rest of the cake it.
I use a Devil's Food Duncan Hines- or whatever the richest, darkest, chocolatiest cake mix I can find is. Follow package directions for baking.

When mixing the cake, I dumps broken pieces of chocolate in the batter at random. Not a ton- maybe the equivalent of a candy bar.

Bake cake in two 9 inch rounds. Let cool, then cut off the tops (to make them flat) and then cut one layer in half horizontally (splitting it into two round layers) (to make 3 layers- one full size layer, and one layer split in two. There usually isn't enough batter to do 4 layers because one of the rounds is inevitably too thin.)

Spread some thick raspberry jam on top of two of the layers. Let it sit in the fridge a day or so to soak in. You can even make some light cut marks on the tops of the layers to help it soak in a little.

On another day, make the raspberry mousse. I take heavy whipping cream and whip until almost stiff in the mixer. Add some powered sugar, fresh raspberries, and a small amount of raspberry jam for flavor. Be careful- if your jam is runny, it will turn the mousse in to liquid. Make sure it stays STIFF.

Put mousse into a pastry bag or a ziplock (cut off the corner of the bag to turn into a ghetto pastry bag) and then pipe a gutter around the edge of the cake. Then pipe the filling across the rest of the layer.

Stack layers/pipe more.

Your top layer should just be cake, no raspberry, no mousse.

Stick back in the fridge, ideally for a few hours or even a day.

Then make the ganche. You can just google a recipe, but all we did was slowly heat more heavy whipping cream on the stove to a simmer/boil. Then we dumped it into a bowl of high quality chocolate chips (we used ghiradelli) and let it sit. (DO NOT STIR). After 10 minutes, stir.

Then you just dump it on the cake and swirl it and smear it around until it's pretty and the cake is totally covered. You might have to do a few layers of ganache to make it attractive. Store in fridge. The longer it sits, the more the raspberry flavor blooms into the cake.

Enjoy!

...PS If you stick your cake in the freezer to speed things along, be sure you don't smash it into the ceiling of your freezer.

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First Date with K

So, there is this guy at school I noticed last fall. I thought he was pretty attractive, but his name was hard to say (seriously) so I felt shy about talking to him because I literally had no idea what his name was. He wasn't in our cohort so I only saw him at a mixer or two in the fall, and bumped into him a couple of times this spring. (And finally mastered his name in early Summer.)

The Program Assistant for our department is a really nice, friendly girl and also super aware of the fact I'm single. (Because I complain about it every 4th second.) "K" popped into the office one day when she and I were chatting, and after he left, she mentioned, "I think K is single."

Oh, really!

So, after a brief period where I attempted to pump her for information about him, I decided to just add him as a friend on Facebook. We had a couple of brief, funny conversations with each other in the law school, and that was it.

Until...

The guy really likes food. He takes pictures of food alot, and cooks alot, and seems decently talented in the kitchen. After he posted some photos of something he had made on Facebook, I commented and asked if he did delivery!

I went to bed a few minutes later and as I was laying in bed, I just KNEW he was going to message me. I laid there and I waited. I knew he was going to ask to cook for me.

I laid there for about 10 minutes trying to ignore the bizarre conviction when my phone beeped.
Private message.
From K.
"I don't deliver, but would you like to come over one day and I'll cook you dinner?"
Apparently I'm psychic.

So a week or so later I went over to his house after work and had Japanese Curry for the first time. He had it all ready when I got there and it was great. The conversation was good, but K made it very, VERY clear he was on the hunt for a relationship and a girlfriend. He made a number of comments about the type of person he was looking for, asked me about my dating life, and seemed a little territorial when I mentioned I had been to the house of a guy who sort of has a reputation for being a player. (Which made me laugh- and no, I didn't fool around with the player! We went to a tailgate at the guy's house. Total coincidence!) K straight up told me that he is 28, single, all of his friends are married with kids or coupled up and that it "was time."

Super interesting. I'd never heard a guy talk like that before, and I enjoyed the transparency. That said, I wasn't totally sure if we were a match. I definitely find him attractive, but I didn't really feel that "magic." I was totally open, and would go out with him again, I just didn't feel it. So I didn't feel super invested in the process, but tried to be open. I know from dating David (my college boyfriend) that sometimes that magic happens later, and you shouldn't close yourself off from someone whose company you enjoy because you never know!

We had dinner out on his back patio, which was very nice, and talked for a few hours. I was a little worried because my friend had texted me that there was a huge lumber mil fire right over by my house, and I was right on the edge of the evacuation zone. My animals were home alone, so that made me a little worried, but Sarah promised to watch the news updates and let me know if they evacuated my neighborhood. They didn't, and it turned out okay, but I was a little stressed when I first got there because of the fire- but I didn't want to cancel at the last minute, literally standing on his porch!

Since K made dinner, I brought dessert for us to share, which was also quite tasty. I had planned on bringing this monstrous 3 layer cake thing, but a few things went awry in making it and Sarah and I ended up feeding it to the dogs. (Although it was delicious, it just wasn't very pretty!)

Quite a few things went wrong with this cake. First of all, I couldn't find my round springform pan. So I used a novelty pan in the shape of a piece of wonderbread. Not a bright idea.The shape just didn't work.

Next, I bungled the raspberry mousse at least three times. We made three separate trips to the store. Then, I also deviated from the recipe (which I had made up to begin with.) Because K had mentioned he preferred lighter desserts and this was a dark chocolate, chocolate cake, it felt too heavy for what we were having for dinner. So I switched everything to white cake and white chocolate ganache, but it didn't turn out the same. I'd also never made white ganache before and it was not pretty. It also didn't coat like it was supposed to. (Probably because I thinned it out too much. )

Anyway, so it didn't look so bad at first, but by the end it looked like vomit.

 No way I was taking this hot mess on a first date at some rando dude's house after he cooked me dinner from scratch. Forget it!

The dog's loved it. We gave them 20 seconds, and then took it away. The cake, while ugly, tasted amazing.

I ended up bringing homemeade whipped cream, raspberries and balckberries for dessert instead. My friend suggested I bring whipped cream and strawberries but that sounded so dirty I couldn't handle it and got more expensive fruit. HA!

After dinner and dessert and a few hours of talking, K walked me most of the way back to my car, gave me a real, body-smushing hug, and we said goodbye. Nothing else physical, but it felt like a good time, and I enjoyed his company for friendship or whatever.