I had an awesome day yesterday! I have my biggest and most expensive cake order coming up, and well, folks, I have to admit, I was VERY intimidated by it. Two cakes, one being a flavour I have never made before, and the magnitude of this cake compared to everything else I've done thus far... wow.... scary! But I forged ahead, did some research and produced two versions of the cake for the client. She came over Wednesday evening to taste test them, and while she LOVED both, she picked one and went on her way.
So, I obviously had leftovers of the cakes, which I decided to bring in to work to share. My coworkers all know I bake, and I've sold cakes to many of them. When I began talking about this flavour though, I had them drooling... lol.. so I had to bring it in. Besides, the more I share, the less that ends up on my butt, right?
A repeat customer of mine tried it, and remembered that she wanted to ask me to do a shower cake for her daughter-in-law (how sweet, right?), and another co-worker reached over for a forkful and fell in love. Sometimes, it's hard taking compliments... especially after having some indifferent or negative people in your life, but it was so great to hear that my creation was not only liked by the client, but also by others, who placed orders! And it was merely by fluke, which makes it even better. I guess I have a bigger market at my fingertips than I thought!
So what was the flavour, right? Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. Yes, it's truly as divine as it sounds. I made my best chocolate cake recipe, and added 1/2 cup raspberry jam to the batter. I wasn't sure if it would be enough, and will be adding probably another 1/4 cup to the final cakes, because we wanted the flavour to be a bit more pronounced. It left a nice lingering chocolate raspberry aftertaste, a nice blend of flavours on the tongue.
After that was baked and cooled, I made a batch of chocolate buttercream. I cut each 8 inch cake in half, because I wanted to do two versions. I piped icing along the edges of the cake to hold the filling, which was a delicious raspberry mousse. I did this for both cakes.
Now here is where I switched things up, and they weren't major changes, but enough to make a difference. On one cake, I used straight chocolate buttercream to ice it. Left it at that.
On the other cake, I lightened up the buttercream by blending whipped cream into it to make it lighter and fluffier. But before I iced it, I melted some chocolate and drizzled it over the raspberry mousse filling. As it cooled, it would harden and give the cake a little chocolate crunch which would be the truffle part of the cake. Then I iced the cake with the lightened buttercream and I was done.
She chose the one with the melted chocolate in the filling, which also happened to be the cake I brought into work. :) What I thought was awesome was how the jam in the batter made the cake denser, richer and made it seem fancier. It would be something you might find in a restaurant.
Another great thing is now I have another flavour to add to Denise's Custom Cakes!
Have a great weekend and stay sweet!
D
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