This chocolate zucchini cake was served for my birthday a few days ago. Of course I made it myself. Everybody who knows me is aware that I am a huge chocoholic. There is a reason I have a separate chocolate category on my blog. For my birthday I wanted a rich and decadent chocolate cake. Since it is zucchini season right now, why not make a chocolate zucchini cake? However, this time I decided against combining chocolate with a fruit. The most traditional of course being with raspberries. It does not surprise me that the raspberry chocolate cake has been clicked on more than 220,000 times. I have also another popular banana chocolate cake on my blog. If you are interested to learn what I have made for previous birthday check this out. Spoiler: each year I try something different and almost always it is going to be with chocolate. This year I wanted chocolate flavor, so I decided to fill this cake with a chocolate frosting. So creamy and so good, I think it is worth each and every calorie!
Today I have a small three-tiered chocolate wedding cake for 10-12 people for you. This is a chocolate cake, which is filled with blackberry cream and frosted with a delicious chocolate frosting. I decorated it with fresh blackberries (duh), figs, and rosemary sprigs. I wanted to do three tiers even though there were few guests because I find it looks prettier than one plain cake. As the wedding took place at the end of September, I wanted to make sure to use seasonal ingredients and for it to taste like fall. Other than the wedding cake with chocolate drip, this one would remain plain, the main feature it being a chocolate wedding cake. I knew I was going to decorate it with fresh fruit and herbs of the season.
Let’s celebrate! It has been five years ago that I had a horrible bike accident including brain bleeding. You can check the details here. As I didn’t have any permanent damage thankfully, I want to celebrate with chocolate and invite you guys, we will attempt original Sachertorte! In 2014 I was fortunate enough to eat real Sachertorte in the Café Sacher in Salzburg. The below picture is one of the first pictures I took with my Sony camera and I am still proud of the shot. I mean, considering that I knew very little of photography, I would say it is a great shot! Sachertorte is a chocolate sponge cake that contains butter. Traditionally you will glue together the two cake layers with apricot jam and cover everything with a chocolate glaze. The cake is served with unsweetened whipping cream on the side. Of course I already have a recipe for Sachertorte on the blog. However, recently I got inspired to try again and make a version as close as possible to the original. Once I watched the movie “Sachertorte” on Amazon (a nice little romantic comedy in my opinion), I was hooked. In said movie the main character eats Sachertorte every day in the Sacher Café in Vienna in the hopes of meeting his sweetheart that mentioned she would celebrate her birthday in the cafe at 4pm. So I did some research. Obviously the recipe from the Sacher hotel was a big help. But, and I quote, I have to say that even the hotel Sacher mentions that “This is only an approximation of the original recipe, which of course must remain a tightly-kept secret.”
This is the perfect cake for Valentine’s Day, a moist and decadent strawberry chocolate cake. Who would like to get a piece of this deliciousness? The cake is made of a devil’s food cake, the filling is made with real strawberries and since it is not the season yet, we will use frozen strawberries. The final touches are a chocolate drip and fresh strawberries dipped in chocolate. Who wants a piece?
In four days on February 15th, this blog will turn five. That’s reason to celebrate! That’s why I am offering this super delicious raspberry chocolate cake. Why I am doing it four days in advance and why this is the second chocolate raspberry cake on the blog, I will let you know below.
I don’t remember distinctly why I hit “publish” on a Thursday, which was February 15th, 2017. I believe I had made this French lemon tart for Valentine’s. My hubby loves anything with citrus fruits. At the beginning of this blog I thought I wouldn’t publish anything other than cookie recipes and recipes my husband requested. It may sound stupid, but it also holds true in baking. Practice makes perfect. I baked, and baked, and baked. I would simply pick recipes I liked on the Internet. If I happened to make the recipe again, I would usually tweak it a bit. At the beginning I followed recipes as much as I could, tried to understand the basics. At some point I would start creating my own recipes. I would probably use a cake based I used in recipe X, but liked the filling of recipe Y better and would happily mix and match. In 2019 a good friend of mine asked me whether I would be willing to bake her wedding cake with 100 guests. I agreed as I believed to have one full year to practice. Due to COVID one year turned into two, so I practiced layer cake after layer cake. There is a reason that I published some many cake recipes in 2020 and 2021. Many of those were trial runs for the wedding cake. Among these was my first chocolate raspberry cake. Very soon I learned that this was super popular. You guys made that recipe your number 2 in 2020 as well as 2021, I just checked. I am so happy every time somebody bakes it again.
Today you will get the ultimate chocolate cake with creamy chocolate mousse filling and chocolate ganache! If this is not something for dark days in November, I don’t know what is. I believe there is a reason why the most loved, baked, and clicked recipe on my site are these brownie cookies. I originally posted that recipe in November while living in Hamburg, which is known to be dark in winter. So here we come again with yet another chocolate recipe to cheer you up. As a chocoholic I have a full category dedicated to chocolate of course, feel free to check it out.
I believe it is time to say goodbye to summer. At least here in the north of Germany you can tell, the nights are getting chilly and the days are definitely getting shorter. For that reason I decided to celebrate the change of season with a chocolate layer cake with lots of berries. Mind you, the strawberries are not imported, but actually from Germany. But regardless of what type of berries you have at hand, I am sure you will love this cake. Just make sure you find some tart berries and you will be good to go. The sweetness of the chocolate combines nicely with the brries, believe me.