The quintessential birthday cake is chocolate cake, right? For years, our family’s go-to birthday cake is a double layer chocolate devil’s cake with whipped cream as the filling and topping and adorned with berries, usually it’s strawberries but sometimes there are raspberries and blueberries too. Traditionally, we used the box cake mix, but this year for my mom’s birthday I decided to try Ina Garten’s chocolate cake recipe.
I already had faith in the recipe, since it is Ina’s, but when I saw the recipe uses buttermilk AND coffee, I was really sold.
Then, I wanted to spice things up a bit in terms of the filling. As much as I love whipped cream, I wanted something a bit more special, so I decided on making a Toblerone mousse filling. It’s super easy, just melt the chocolate bars down, and proceed from there as if you were making any other mousse. I got the recipe from my Swiss friend, so of course it was going to be delicious (the Swiss know their chocolate!).
Finally, the cakes were cooled (a CRUCIAL step in cake decorating) and ready for the mousse.
Since we would be celebrating in Philadelphia, I thought my safest bet would be to transport the cake in a springform pan. This allowed the filling to set without letting the cake layers shift around. The only thing was that there was no room in the fridge when we got there, so the mousse did get a little melty.
Definitely a cake for raspberries, my favorite of all the berries. I did throw a dollop of whipped cream on top as well, both for color and a creamy contrast.
The verdict, this really is a reliable chocolate cake recipe. It’s super moist and not heavy. I think the best thing about it is that it’s not very sweet. It’s one of those cakes with a deep chocolate flavor (thanks to the coffee) that lets the frosting provide the sweetness. Ina’s recipe goes along with a recipe for chocolate buttercream, which I’m sure would have been great, but I was also very pleased with the Toblerone filling.
Ooey, gooey chocolatey yumminess.