Spongebob and Patrick Raspberry Dark Chocolate Cake

This is a long overdue post but I had more pressing bakes to post first. That's why the 2 month delay. I made this Spongebob themed raspberry dark chocolate cake for a friend's daughter!

Toasted almond flour that I use for making macarons is great as edible "sand"! 

I made the mini chocolate cake concurrently with the stump cake so you may refer to this post for detailed recipe and link to my original ultimate chocolate cake recipe. 

Here are some photos for the process of making the macaron decorations.

Piping out the shells. I used French method for such a small batch. 

Freshly baked shells! 

I drew the black outlines using fine-tipped edible marker before filling in the details with royal icing. Make sure that you dry the black ink thoroughly overnight or in 60°C oven for an hour (fan on) before adding on the royal icing, or the black ink will run. 

I filled the shells with raspberry dark chocolate ganache. 

Raspberry dark chocolate ganache
Ingredients:
65g dark chocolate couverture
6g unsalted butter
18g heavy cream
1/8tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/2 tsp coffee liqueur
8g freeze-dried raspberry powder

Steps :
1. Place all ingredients except raspberry powder in microwave-safe bowl. Heat on medium power for 20 sec and mix well. Repeat heating and mixing as necessary until smooth and melted.

2. Add freeze-dried raspberry powder and mix well.

3. Let the ganache firm up until toothpaste consistency before transferring into piping bag. You may choose to whip the ganache for a lighter texture if you wish.

Ta-dah! I assembled this using stiff royal icing. 

Let the assembled structure air dry preferably in air conditioned room for an hour before storing in airtight condition in the fridge. This can keep in fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Adding oven-baked raspberries between the chocolate sponge layers adds a refreshing tangy touch and balances the richness of chocolate.

I baked the fresh raspberries by laying them out in a single layer on parchment paper, sprinkle some lemon juice , a pinch of salt and some sugar, and bake in preheated oven at 110°C for about 30 min. This can be prepared in advance and kept in the fridge. Reserve any liquid that seeped out from the raspberries as well. This can be used to brush on the sponge to moisten and flavour it.

Here was how I assembled the cake. It is similar to the stump cake, except that I added the raspberries on top of the mixture of chocolate custard and dark chocolate ganache before layering on anothee layer of sponge. I made 4 layers of sponge and 3 layers of filling for this.

The sponge is only about 4 inches in diameter so it is a really small cake. I covered the cake assembly with a coat of dark chocolate ganache and used a spatula to create some vertical marks. I sprinkled some toasted almond flour at the base of the cake.

With love,
Phay Shing