Raspberry Mocha Cake

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Makes 1 eight-inch double-layer cake, yielding 12-16 pieces, serving 14 people^[1]

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Are you man enough to proudly and loudly order a raspberry mocha in a crowded Starbucks?

"Are You Man Enough?" from C3 Journey, via Make It Like a Man! Raspberry Mocha Cake

These Are the Guys Who Taught Me How to Bake

If so, this cake is for you. (It’s also for anyone who loves raspberry with chocolate. If you do, you will be ecstatic about this absolutely delicious, old-world style cake.)

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1½ teaspoons baking soda

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (cold is fine)

⅓ cup (packed) cocoa powder

1 tall Starbucks raspberry mocha

½ tsp fine salt

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup sour cream

10-12 oz raspberry jam or preserves, such as “Favorit Swiss Preserves”^[2]

The Best Whipped Frosting

Red sugar, for decorating (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat to 350. Butter and flour 2 eight-inch round cake pans. 2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix flour, sugar, and baking soda with the whisk attachment. Set aside. In a medium saucepan, heat butter, cocoa, 1 cup of the mocha, and salt, whisking until homogenized. Pour this liquid mixture into the dry mixture and whisk on 1, gradually moving to 6, for about 30 seconds, or until fully homogenized. Scrape sides of bowl with spatula. Add eggs, one at a time, whisking until combined. Scrape sides of bowl with spatula. Add vanilla and sour cream, whisking until combined. Scrape sides of bowl with spatula one final time. 3. Pour batter into pans. Tap them heartily on the countertop to settle the batter and help eliminate large air pockets. Give’m a minute, and tap them again. Bake 30 minutes, or until tester comes out clean.^[3] Cakes will crack before they’re done. While they bake, reheat remaining mocha and drink it. 4. Once pans are cool enough to easily handle, remove cakes and allow them to finish cooling on racks. 5. Use raspberry jam between layers, piping a perimeter of frosting around the bottom layer to keep the jam in place, and frost cake with whipped frosting. I like a cake to reveal or at least hint at its true flavor visually. I’d like that of people, too, but I guess that’s a lot to ask, isn’t it, Becca? You can use red sugar and/or chocolate shavings to accomplish this, (though no amount of sugar is going to sweeten up Becca, let’s face facts) although there are certainly myriad other ways, not the least of which would be fresh raspberries, glued in place around the perimeter of the cake with bits of frosting.^[4]

"Stanzi and Cops," from Wide Right and Natty Litght, via Make It Like a Man! Raspberry Mocha Cake

Stanzi and his Pal Weren’t Man Enough for the Mocha

Notes:

[1] Serving Size: Although anything smaller would seem like a sliver, 1/16 of the cake is perfect. One-twelfth of the cake is the piece I’d consider as the largest that I’d care to justify. Go bigger, and, well, you’ll wind up going bigger.^[5]

[2] Preserves: will be prominent in the finished cake, so you want something good. If you have no choice but to use something like Smuckers, you might try a mixture of 3 parts jam to 1 part preserves.

[3] Tester: In my experience, the success of this and most other from-scratch cakes rests on about a 60-second window of opportunity. You need to remove them from the oven PRECISELY when they’re done. A minute in the wrong direction will take you from bliss to blech. You need to take raspberry mocha cakes out as soon as the toothpick comes out dry, and the only way you’ll know that you’ve nailed the “as soon as” part is if your first dip comes out wet. If you even suspect that you’ve overbaked these cakes, spare yourself the wretched anxiety and infuse them with a simple syrup just in case. As soon as you’ve placed the cakes on the cooling racks, prick the hell out of them with your trusty toothpick. Then brush them liberally with syrup. (Lightly flavor this syrup with raspberry, and you’re one clever bastard.) Just before frosting, invert the cakes and perform the same procedure on the bottom of each. Don’t worry about marring the cakes as you do this; that’ll get covered up by the frosting.

[4] Perimeter: According to my tastes, I’d do this on along the perimeter of the top layer only if that layer were flat. A magic strip won’t help you here. This cake rises by a dark magic that cannot be undone by stripping. You’ll have to level the layer with a knife. Or a sword, if you’re Zorro. If you want to leave the cake domed (which is actually my preference), ring the raspberries around the base of the cake.

[5] In Japan, they tell it like it is:

"Japan Fat," from The Chive, via Make It Like a Man! Raspberry Mocha Cake

Going Bigger

4 thoughts on “Raspberry Mocha Cake”

Bonnie on May 10, 2014

Would you consider a blog post about how to prepare a cake for frosting, and how to frost it, for someone without professional tools? I think that would be helpful for a lot of home bakers.

- Jeff the Chef on May 12, 2014
  
  Sure! Watch for it in an upcoming post. Cheers!
  
Val on May 10, 2014

Where do I start? I like the way you write directions. You have a great sense of humor, as well. Clever use of a Starbucks drink. But I think my favorite thing is your invention of the words chococake, darkocolate, and cak-e-mous. Bravo!

- Jeff the Chef on May 12, 2014
  
  I am rather fond of darkocolate … thanks, Val! I was just thinking that I need to invent a darkocolate cak-e-mous.