Chocolate Coconut Cake with Fresh Raspberry Cream and Dark Chocolate Ganache 23

Note: HUGE THANKS go to the WONDERFUL, ever stylish and tres sophisticated Aunty Teeeeeee for helping shoot the cake in it’s best light!! :)

Bubba’s first birthday was a big deal. For Mummy anyway!

Your first child only turns one once, and as my sister says it’s a milestone for them AND YOU! Many people wished me ‘Happy Giving-birth day’ which was lovely…..and also not so lovely as memories of contractions came viciously flooding back into my mind! But yes, it was definitely a HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY day overall for me, one year ago!

Birthday cakes. They come in all shapes and sizes. Flavours, types, structures and the list goes on. For Bubba, I knew she was going to have 2 cakes, one for her ACTUAL BIRTHDAY, which needed to be pretty and striking but mainly YUMMY as we were going to eat it with our tea and coffee on the day. And the other, YET TO BE MADE, which will most definitely be more of a visual extravaganza, a feast for the eyes, rather than the palette….although I hope to make it scrumptious too!

Birthday Cake ‘A’ – the yummy one, the one that this post is about, was a decadent, moist chocolate coconut cake sandwiched between layers of rich dark chocolate ganache and whipped fresh raspberry cream. It was topped with an extra thick layer of the ganache and decorated with two types of pink sugared hearts. A special cake for a very, very special little girl.

I wouldn’t say this cake was particularly DIFFICULT to make…….time consuming? YES. But not diffcult. It is also a little technical, but only in terms of making it look acceptable and making sure it doesn’t collapse.

The starting point was making the 2 choc/ coconut cakes. I made these the night before her birthday and stored them in airtight containers.

The type of cake you are looking for is not fluffy like a sponge but definitely not dense like a mud. You want a good old-fashioned moist chocolate cake. If you have a recipe for this, use it, if you don’t feel free to use the same one as I did, and always do when making a simple chocolate cake. It’s from Donna Hay.

Ingredients

250g butter, melted
3/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1 1/3 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups desicated coconut
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup milk

Method

Shove all ingredients into a bowl, whisk to combine, pour into 8 inch round tin, slam into preheated 160 deg. cel. oven, for abouttttttt an hour, or until done, check with a skewer.

Ok, so cakes done, onto the rest.

Pull the first cake out of the airtight, place it on a cakestand and get out the best bread-knife you own.

Cut the cake EVENLY in half. Go to youtube and let Jamie Oliver show you how it’s done.

Repeat with the second cake. Once cut, lay out your four layers.

Ganache is your next step. It’s not hard at all. Place 400g good quality dark chocolate into a pan……..

……..with 250ml of single cream and SLOWLY melt over a low heat. BE SURE TO STIR CONSTANTLY.

Once melted and combined turn off the heat. You have ganache! Set aside and allow to cool for about 10 minutes. It will also thicken.

Now you want to complete the top layer of the cake so that you can put it in the fridge to set properly. SO, take one layer of Choc/Coco cake and spoon ganache into the centre of it. Be generous.

Add more ganache to the centre and let it naturally spread out. Make sure it doesn’t roll quickly off the edges. It will eventually seep down the edges but you want to control this! Add more, add more, assist the spread with a spatula.

Now for the sprinkles! Get your pink hearts and scatter them on a beautiful dish….just because it looks pretty!

Start to apply them as a border to the top layer of the cake. Don’t worry about being perfect! Scatter scatter scatter!!

Continue the border and scatter a ‘1’ in the centre of the cake. I added silver balls, edible of course, on top of the ‘1’ , just for extra razzle dazzle! Once complete shove into fridge to set.

Prepare the raspberry cream by whipping cream and folding through squashed fresh raspberries. You want to make sure that the overall look of the cream is still very white, so don’t squash the raspberries too much otherwise they will bleed throuh the cream and make it ugly!

Now you’re ready to assemble! So, place a layer of cake onto the cake stand. This will be the base of the cake. Add some ganache in an organic, swirly motion. It doesn’t need to be even or perfect as you will be doing the same thing on the other layers too, so each piece of cut cake will deifnitely have enough ganache in it!

Next step is to add a generous layer of cream on top of the ganache. Simple.

Now CAREFULLY place another layer of cake, then ganache, then cream on top of the existing layer. Repeat again.

It’s now time for the top layer. Remove it from the fridge and place on to cake. Ooooooh I am SO excited!

And it’s done! A delicious and very, very preeeeeeeeedy birthday cake!!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KOUKLA!