My husband is a quarter of a century old!
Bahaha!
I just love saying that, but I better watch it because I will be 25 before you know it! 
Yay!
By Logan’s request, I made a Chocolate Raspberry Cake.
Logan’s Chocolate Raspberry Forest Cake was:
- Dark chocolate cake layers
- Dark chocolate ganache and raspberry filling
- Vanilla buttercream frosting
- Dark chocolate trees
Let me tell you something! This cake was GOOD!
Just look at those amazing layers!
This cake was so moist and with the tart flavor and crunch from the filling. You talk about good!
Oh, and it’s just a fact of life that you must enjoy a slice with a scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt (for those of you ice cream lovers like me!).
Anyway. On to the recipe!!!
Chocolate Cake Layers
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Ingredients
- 1/3 cups dark chocolate chips such as Ghirardelli
- 1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
- 3 cups sugar
- 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups Hershey’s special dark cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoons salt
- 3 large eggs
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cups well-shaken low fat buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
How-To
- Preheat oven to 300°.
- Grease and lightly flour 3 9″ cake pans.
- In a medium sized bowl, pour the hot coffee over the chocolate chips. Let it stand for a couple of minutes, and stir until chocolate is melted.
- Into a large bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In the bowl of your electric mixer beat eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored (about 3 minutes with a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a hand-held mixer).
- Slowly add the oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to the eggs, beating until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.
- Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans
- Bake on the middle racks of the oven until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, about an 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes.
- Cool layers completely in pans on racks.
- Once completely cooled, invert the cake layers onto individual long sheets of plastic wrap. Be sure to wrap each layer tightly.
- Freeze the layers for about 3-4 hours (up to 24 hours).
When you are ready to assemble the cake, begin by preparing the raspberry filling and chocolate ganache. Please note: Just prior to this point, you should have set your butter out at room temperature to soften (for about 4 hours until it’s soft yet slightly still cool).
Raspberry Filling
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup raspberry preserves (or jam)
- 2-4 tablespoons frozen/frozen raspberries (or strawberries), finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons corn starch
How-To
- In a small sauce pan, heat all ingredients until heated through.
- Pour into a small bowl and set aside in the refrigerator.
Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup dark chocolate chips
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
How-To
- In a small sauce pan, heat the heavy cream until warm (don’t boil!).
- Add in the chocolate chips and stir until completely blended.
- Pour into a small bowl and set aside on the counter.
Now, once the raspberry filling has thickened up in the fridge and the chocolate ganache has cooled and thickened at room temperature, it’s time to make the frosting.
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
adapted from pure and yummy
Ingredients
- 3 3/4 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 3 3/4 cups powdered sugar
- dash of salt
- 3 tsp. vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp. heavy cream
How-To
- In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat butter at medium-high speed until smooth, about 20 seconds.
- Add the powered sugar and salt and beat at medium-low speed until most of the sugar is moistened, about 45 seconds.
- Scrape down the bowl and beat at medium speed until mixture is fully combined, about 15 seconds.
- Scrape bowl, add vanilla and heavy cream, and beat at medium speed until incorporated, about 10 seconds.
- Then increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down bowl once or twice.
Now, take your cake layers out of the freezer. One at a time, unwrap a layer of cake and using a piping bag fitted with a medium circular tip and filled with the frosting, pipe a circle on around the top of the cake layer as a border/barricade for which the filling is confined to.
Spread half of the chocolate ganache on the cake layer, inside the frosting border.
Spread half of the raspberry filling on top of the ganache.
Put the 2nd cake layer ontop of the filling of the first and repeat.
Finally, place the 3rd layer on the top and cover the remaining cake with the frosting and place the cake in the refrigerator.
Next, assemble the chocolate trees.
Chocolate Trees
Ingredients
- 12 ounces dark chocolate chips
How-To
- Over a double boiler, melt the chocolate.
- Remove from the double boiler and let the chocolate get lukewarm (it should be soft enough to drip/lightly squeeze out of a piping bag but not so hard that you have to use a lot of pressure to get it out of the bag)
- Lay out a couple layers of foil on a flat surface (or even better, on flat cookie sheets).
- Draw out your trees with the melted chocolate.
- Put the chocolate trees in the fridge until they are hard.
- Using gloves (so you don’t melt the trees with your hands or get finger prints on them), squirt some chocolate on the backs of your trees and place them on the cake.
The candles ended up burning the forest down!
Oh, no! They’re melting!
Luckily, Logan saved the poor little trees, holding them up while blowing the forest fire out. 
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That looks delicious! So pretty! Happy Birthday to your husband!
Wow I’m impressed! How fun! Happy B’day to your hubby
OOo i love it!
What an absolutely beautiful blog you have. I just stumbled upon you from What’s Gabby Cooking. I love the chocolate trees. i’m glad your husband saved them from the wild fire
Have a wonderful day.
Happy birthday to Logan! I chose a chocolate raspberry cake, too. He has good taste
If I turn 25 again, would you make me this beautiful cake? The chocolate trees are too cute! And I love anything chocolate-raspberry.
GORGEOUS, WAY TOO PRETTY TO EAT!
Lucky Logan !
This cake looks amaaazing!! For the raspberry filling, how much frozen raspberries did you use? You forgot to put that part.
Thanks!!
All fixed. Thanks for catching that Andrea!
Gorgeous cake and beautiful pictures. Happy Bday to your husband!
I think I just found MY birthday cake!! Sounds amazing. Now, will you make it for me and deliver it to NC in August
Of course, I’ll be MUCH older 
I am first time here and I am totally impressed by your wonderful cake! Looks incredible, thanks for sharing!!!
By far the cutest black forest cake I have ever seen! Happy Birthday to your husband!
Happy Birthday to your hubby. What an outstanding cake! Lots of layers of love in that cake.
Mandy
Happy Birthday to Logan!!!! Bet he REALLY enjoyed his cake!!! It looks and sounds AMAZING!!! 25 sounds so young, but when you say “quarter of a century” hahaha thats a different story, LOL!
That cake is an amazing work of art! Logan said it was amazing to eat too!
My 17 year old son asked me to make a chocolate raspberry cake for his girlfriend’s 16th birthday tomorrow… this is DEFINITELY it! I think I’ll do some hearts instead of trees, and maybe some “16″s. Super excited to make it AND to eat it! Thank you!!!
You make the most beautiful cakes! I hope your husband had a wonderful birthday:-)
wOW! THAT CAKE is absolutely gorgeousssssssssss! I love love love the trees on a simple white background!! beautiful!!!!
Your cake looks amazing and absolutely delicious! I am so glad that you enjoyed the buttercream recipe. You did a beautiful job on the trees too and beautiful photos. A Big Happy Birthday to your husband!
Sooo cute with the trees, and this looks DELICIOUS! Your hubby is one lucky man
Beautiful cake! If you do it or something similar again, you should consider tempering the chocolate–that way you don’t have to worry about them melting and bending with ambient heat and candles. It’s not too tough. I plan on posting about it soon on my own site if you want a quick guide. Basically you heat (dark) chocolate to 118ºF, then cool it while stirring to 90ºF. Then you pour and let it chill/set on a cold pan, and thats that! Works great and not nearly as daunting as the internet makes it seem.
Awesome! I know I’ve seen the chefs on those food network challenges tempering the chocolate and it always seems like a REALLY difficult thing to do. You make it sound easy and I’m looking forward to seeing how you do it!
Thank you so much Savannah!
This cake looks fabulous. Great work! I am making a cake this week for Mother’s Day and I wanted to use this recipe. Do you know if there is anything I could substitute for the coffee? Thank you so much!!!
If you don’t want the caffeine, maybe try using decaf coffee. But as for eliminating it all together, you might be able to just use hot water. I’ve never tried it, but you could always do a trial run.
I hope it turns out!
Thank you so much for the suggestion. I will see what happens!!!
Hi Camille,
Did you end up using hot water? How did the cake go? I would love to know what you substitute for coffee. Thanks!
Thank you, thank you, THANK you! I made this cake for my boyfriend’s college graduation party and it was a HIT. I did make the change of making this a 4-layer cake and alternating chocolate and vanilla cake layers. The chocolate trees looked beautiful and he loved the final look of the cake. There was not a single piece leftover and everyone scraped their plates clean. Thank you again for posting this!
Awww! I’m so glad Genevieve! I bet your four layer cake looked absolutely incredible!
Eeee…so happy! 
And congratulations to your boyfriend…he’s a lucky guy to have you!
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That is just too adorable!!
I found this recipe on stumbleupon and this was probably the best cake I’ve ever tasted! My boyfriend LOVES this cake and I got a lot of compliments on it, so thank you for the recipe!!!
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I love the sound of your cake & you left wonderful instructions! Thank you. I’m going to try it for a Christmas get together & make the trees green. Hope it looks as good as yours! Thanks!
Well, thank you Sandi! I hope yours turns out beautifully! Happy Holidays and Happy Baking!
Well I made the trees the same as yours & it was wonderful! Thank you! It was a fabulous hit that everyone loved. Very rich! My frosting wasn’t as white as I ‘d have liked but the flavor was the best! I have requests for this clear to next July!!
I’m so glad it was a hit Sandi! Yay!!!
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I have bookmarked this cake to make for Christmas, which is just days away : ) A few qn’s…I have regular bleached all-purpose flour on hand, no unbleached all-purpose flour. Can these be interchanged? Also, I’m a dark chocolate lover but I would be making this amazing cake specially for my mom, who is not allowed to have dark chocolate. If I use regular chocolate, would you recommend bittersweet, or semi-sweet, or? And would you recommend that I keep all the measurement amounts the same or up them a tad? Thanks so much!!
I’m so glad you’re going to make this great cake Jessica! As for your questions: Feel free to use plain all purpose flour for the recipe and for your mom, I would use semi-sweet chocolate…and keep all the measurements the same. I hope it turns out beautifully! Happy Baking!!!
Thank you for getting back to me Caroline!! I ended up getting the correct flour at the store today and semi-sweet chips : ) Will let you know how the modified version turns out! Merry Christmas!! : )
Found your blog via Pinterest and just made this for Christmas dessert — it was WONDERFUL and beautiful too, a big hit! This will be my go-to “fancy cake” recipe from now on, and I love that you could really do all kinds of designs with the chocolate depending on the theme of the day. Thank you so much for sharing this!
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I stumbled upon your website looking for a good cake recipe for my mom’s birthday and this looks awesome! The trees made from chocolate are a great idea, i would never even have thought of that. Thanks for sharing your recipe!
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can this cake be made without coffee??
Well, I’ve never tried making it without coffee, but you could try just using hot water to make it. I know that I’ve used decaf coffee if you’re looking to steer away from the caffeine. But, otherwise, the coffee just enhances the chocolate flavor of the cake.
Happy Baking!
Hey, I’m part way through making this cake (it looked too delicious not to try!).
How tall was the one you made? The layers I baked didn’t seem to rise much – do you know why that might be?
Still, can’t wait to try the end result
Oh, yay! Each layer was about 2 inches tall, making the cake about 6-6.5 inches tall. So yummy! I hope it turns out great! Happy Baking!
I just made this cake today. It’s brilliant. Rich, but brilliant and well-worth the effort! Thank you so much.
Hi, my husband is celebrating his birthday soon – and i’m totally going to bake this cake for him, he is going to be so thrilled! Thanks for sharing the recipe.
Just saw this posted on Pinterest and I’m so excited about trying it. I’m thinking it would make a great Christmas cake as well! Looks so festive! Love your blog…thanks!
Thanks Davis! It’s definitely perfect for Christmas!
Happy Holidays!
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Stumbled across your site. Love the cake! I am going to use choc tree idea from our christmas lunch!!! Thankyou!
Oh wonderful! Thank you Megs! It’s such an easy and gorgeous way to decorate a cake.
Happy Baking!
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I came across this recipe on Pinterest and I want to try it. I was thinking of making the chocolate trees out of white chocolate, in the shape of snowflakes instead. I figured I would use white chocolate chips and melt them like you did, do you think that would work? Thanks for the recipe it looks so yummy, can’t wait to make it!
That would be lovely! I actually saw in Southern Livings magazine’s Christmas issue where they had done the same type of trees in white chocolate.
I hope it all turns out beautifully! Happy Baking!
quick question, why do you freeze the cake layers? I’ve never heard of that before, what’s the purpose of it?
I do it so that it’s easier to work with the layers. They stay in one piece when moving/stacking, leveling the layers, and freezing the cake layers allows the frosting to set better on the cake. It makes the frosting look smooth, almost like fondant when it’s cold. I hope that helps Nicole! Happy Baking!
How many trees could you fit around the cake?
The size trees that I made, I fit 11. But, my suggestion to you is to make more than you think you’ll need and choose your best ones to go on the cake. Then, just eat the leftover ones as a reward for your hard work!
Happy Baking Emily!
Thank you so much! I plan on making some of the tress green to add a pop of color. I can’t wait to make this for my dad’s birthday! He was born on Christmas Eve so I’m making it just for him!
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Love the trees. Looks like the ladies at A Beautiful Mess do too as they’ve just posted a look-a-like tree.
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I’m in the process of making this cake. We’ll be gathering at a condo with family this weekend so i’m making what I can ahead of time and plan on assembling it there. Besides the cakes and the raspberry filling, do you think I can make the trees, ganache or frosting ahead of time?
Hey Jenn! I would think making everything ahead of time would be fine. The only thing I worry about is the trees blossoming. If you temper the chocolate, it won’t blossom and they will be fine. Otherwise, if you are like me and don’t know how to properly temper chocolate, you may want to make those the day of. As for the ganache, make it ahead of time and set it out to room temperature until it reaches a spreadable consistency before putting on the cake. The same goes for the frosting. I wish you the best and happy baking!
Just made this cake for friends coming for dinner – it was the very best cake I have ever made. Delicious! A cake well worth the effort and one I will make over and over.
Thanks so much for sharing!
Killeen
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I made this cake last week for my boyfriend’s birthday, and it is very, very good!
Tip: you should totally have a “pin it” button!
i loved this idea!
I definitely need to. Thank you for the tip Natalie!
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