Devil’s Food Cake with Raspberry Frosting
Tart raspberries taste delicious when paired with a sweet, fudgy chocolate cake. Today I’m bringing you this incredible Devil’s Food Cake topped with my secret raspberry frosting. I love using freeze dried fruit to capture the fresh taste without the soggy wet juices.
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This recipe was originally published on October 10, 2019. It was republished on October 7, 2021 with updates.
Chocolate & Raspberry
I just finished watching an episode of The Great British Bake Off where a contestant made a gorgeous chocolate cake filled and frosted with fresh raspberry frosting. It looked divine! Paul loved how the tart fruit paired with the sweetness of the rich chocolate cake.
It’s important, when you’re creating a recipe, to keep in mind how the flavors interact with each other. If you have too many sweet elements without any acidity or tartness, it becomes cloying and you lose so much flavor. Adding a punch of tart berries to a sweet dessert is a great way to avoid this disaster.
Chocolate Cake: Trials & Tribulations
There are so many chocolate cake recipes on Bakes & Blunders, but you need this one. I mean, I’ve got this one bowl recipe, this vegan one, and this gluten free and vegan one. Yet, I wasn’t satisfied. Chocolate cake batter is usually very liquidy, which makes measuring and portioning out batter tricky.
But, this recipe is the answer to that issue! This chocolate cake batter is silky smooth and looks like pudding. Don’t eat it though, it does have raw eggs. It’s smooth and fluffy and bakes up beautifully! I found this recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks.
Top Tips for Cakes
- Make sure all of your ingredients are at room temperature. This will help everything blend nicely and give your cupcakes a nice texture.
- Scrape down your bowl often. Butter and sugar can hide out at the bottom of your bowl. Make sure everything gets blended!
- Do NOT over mix. Once you add the wet and dry ingredients, keep the speed on stir and only mix to combine.
- Wilton baking strips will give you a flat top and prevent the edges from caramelizing.
- Use an electronic scale to measure your ingredients and to divide your cake batter into the pans.
Secret Raspberry Frosting
Well, I guess it’s not such a secret anymore. My vegan cupcakes and my mango frosting use freeze dried fruit powder to get the fresh fruit flavor and I just love this technique. I actually use freeze dried fruit in a lot of recipes! The raspberry powder adds a nice tartness that cuts down on the sweetness level.
I’ve found that freeze dried raspberries are not nearly as potent as freeze dried strawberries. To get a nice flavor, I like to add a small amount of raspberry extract. And once, I even used strawberry extract instead. It was like a mixed berry buttercream!
Related Reading: Lemon Donuts with a Raspberry Glaze
Finding Freeze Dried Fruit
Not all grocery stores have freeze dried fruit, unfortunately. I almost always get mine at Target, but Trader Joe’s has a good selection as well. If your bags end up with slightly different amounts than mine, no worries. Taste as you go along and adjust any flavorings accordingly.
Now that we’re back in Texas, I don’t have a Trader Joe’s and my Target doesn’t have a full grocery section. Send help. If you’re in my boat, you can also check out Amazon.
Palette Painting with Buttercream
This trend has been all over the place lately and I’ve been dying to give it a go! I love the blend of colors, abstract shapes, and elegance of the whole thing. But how complicated is this technique? It’s actually super easy.
Your cake must be completely chilled before you begin. My palette knives are a cheap set from Amazon, but I’ve found them at the Dollar Tree too! Watch my step by step tutorial to see exactly how to use these fun tools!
To get a cohesive color scheme, I took some of my raspberry frosting and mixed red into one portion and fuschia into another. Then I added a dab of the fuschia frosting to the red portion. This gave me a set of colors (plus some extra white frosting) that worked together.
Random Thought of the Day…
People who don’t bake frequently say that baking is too difficult because it has to be so precise. Honestly, these days I’m kinda like, “What do you mean?” Yes, a lot of aspects in baking require precision (I’m looking at you macarons), but once you learn a bit and gain experience, you’ll find a lot of areas that are open to fiddling. One such area is frosting. Well, American buttercream at least.
You’ve got your butter and powdered sugar, but you can adjust the recipe quite easily to get the flavor and consistency you want. With this raspberry frosting, I tasted it a few times as I whipped it up and added a splash of extract, a pinch of salt, and a bit more powdered sugar. Use your senses to judge when frosting is right, even if that means straying from a recipe.
If you’re new to baking and want to learn more about basic baking ingredients, check out my Ingredient Glossary in the Bakes & Blunders Resource Library. There are over a dozen freebies in there for all of my email subscribers, including quite a few for cakes!
Related Reading: How to Design a Cake with Cake Templates
Enjoy!
Who doesn’t love a nice fudgy chocolate cake layered with a sweet, yet tart raspberry frosting. The secret to this frosting is the freeze dried fruit. Once you try it, you’ll want to incorporate this magical ingredient into more areas of your baking. I’d love to try adding it to bread!
Devil's Food Cake with Raspberry Frosting
Ingredients
Devil's Food Cake
- 4 oz unsweetened chocolate chopped
- 1/4 cup dark cocoa powder .75 oz
- 1 1/4 cup boiling water 10 fl oz
- 3.75 oz all- purpose flour (3/4 cup)
- 3 oz cake flour (3/4 cup)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 8 oz unsalted butter softened (2 sticks)
- 10 1/2 oz dark brown sugar
- 3 eggs room temperature
- 1/2 cup sour cream 4 oz
- 1 tsp vanilla
Raspberry Buttercream Frosting
- 1 lb unsalted butter softened (4 sticks)
- 2 1/2 oz freeze dried raspberries
- 30 oz powdered sugar
- 1/2 tsp raspberry extract optional
- 2- 4 Tbsps cream or milk
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
Devil's Food Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and spray three 6 inch cake pans with baking spray. Line with parchment paper and set aside.
- Place chocolate and cocoa powder in a small heat proof bowl. Add the boiling water and whisk until smooth. Set aside to cool slightly.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking soda, and salt. Whisk and set aside.
- Beat butter on a medium- high speed for about a minute, or until creamy. Add brown sugar and beat on a high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape the bowl down.
- With the mixer on a medium- high speed. Carefully add the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined after each addition. Scrape the bowl down.
- Add the sour cream and vanilla and beat on a medium speed until combined, about 10 seconds. Scrape the bowl down.
- Add a third of the dry ingredients and beat on low until just combined. With the mixer running, add half of the chocolate mixture and beat until just combined.
- Add another third of the dry ingredients and beat on low until just combined. With the mixer running, add the remaining chocolate mixture and beat until just combined.
- Add the last of the dry ingredients and beat until just combined. Do not over beat. Scrape the bowl down and fold gently to combine.
- Divide the batter among the pans (about 15 oz each) and bake until the tops spring back when poked and a skewer comes out clean, about 40 minutes.. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Cool completely before assembling.
Raspberry Buttercream Frosting
- Place the freeze dried raspberries in a food processor and run until they are reduced to a fine powder. Sift out the seeds and add the raspberry powder to the sifted powdered sugar. Set aside.
- Beat the butter on medium- high speed until light, about 10 minutes. Add a third of the sugar/ raspberry dust. Beat on low until combined, then on medium for a minute or two, or until smooth. Scrape the bowl down.
- Add another third of the sugar mixture. Beat on low until combined, then on medium for a minute or two, or until smooth. Scrape the bowl down.
- Add the last of the sugar, raspberry extract (optional), and a pinch of salt. Beat on low until combined, then on medium for a minute or two, or until smooth. Scrape the bowl down. Add cream or milk one tablespoon at a time until you have a smooth, but thick consistency. Taste the frosting and adjust the consistency or flavors, if necessary.
Notes
- Cupcake bake time: 15 minutes at 350℉
- 8 inch pan bake time: 20- 23 minutes at 350℉
- You can use five thin 6 inch pans. Fill with 5.5 oz (3/4 cup) of batter and bake at 325F for 15- 17 minutes.
My Favorite Products for this Recipe
Colleen
Hi there! I’m Colleen, a novice baker with a passion for learning and improving my bakes… and blunders. On Bakes and Blunders, you can find all sorts of tasty recipes that range in difficulty, but most importantly, I’ll try to explain the reason behind important steps. If you know why a recipe works, you can tweak and adapt it to suit your unique tastes, and you’ll be able to reliably produce some very delicious treats. If you love baking and want to expand and grow your skills, or if you are a casual baker and just need some pointers, my blog is right up your alley! Join me on my baking journey and we’ll learn how to make more impressive recipes together.
6 Comments
Kristina
How many ounces of the cake batter do you use for an 8″ round? This recipe sounds delish!
Colleen
I haven’t weighed out the batter for an 8″ pan. If you do, let me know! I hope you enjoy the cake <3
Gwen
Are you using 1 lb. of butter which would be 4 sticks or 1 1/2 lb. which would be 6 sticks. Thank you.
Colleen
Thanks for catching that! It is 1 lb, or 4 sticks, of unsalted butter 😀
Angela Greven | Mean Green Chef
Classic flavors and so beautifully decorated too! Love this cake and you always do such a lovely job with your step by step process! Thanks so much for sharing 🙂
Colleen
Thanks! I’ve discovered that most cake decorating techniques are pretty simple when you break it down.