Mmmm....Cake.

My mom’s birthday was yesterday and my dad asked if I would make a cake….So Carolyn (my bro’s girlfriend) and I decided that clearly we needed to make an Almond Torte with a chocolate ganache glaze. Clearly.

The actual cake baking was easy…. Well until I tasted the batter. Not. Good. We figured out that my plan to just ignore the Orange Liquor in the recipe was a bad one. I assumed it was just a little bit for flavor but no… it called for a quarter cup. So on the fly we substituted Absolut Razpberi – the closest thing I had on hand. And anything is better with a little Razz. We were concerned but it ended up being the Best Idea Ever. The cake came out so very delicious and raspberry-y:

Mmmmmm layers.

So then we used homemade raspberry jam: (my mom and I made it a few weeks ago it from fresh raspberries we picked here. For me raspberry picking at Rosby’s is synonymous with Cleveland in the fall) for a filling:

Mmmmm Homemade Raspberry Jam

The cake at this point was finished according to the recipe… but we wanted to turn it up a notch…and nothing is tastier on a cake than Chocolate Ganache. Also? It’s the messiest thing ever. But after figuring out that we needed to put the cake on a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet to catch all of the chocolate runoff it was actually pretty easy to do. And came out so smooth and shiny:


Mmmmm chocolate glaze

Carolyn had the very high-pressure job of writing happy birthday on the cake. Oh yeah – we made the icing from scratch, too and substituted raspberry extract for the vanilla the recipe called for. You gotta take the theme all the way! Although I have a ton of icing left – can you freeze it I wonder?


Mmmm raspberry icing

We used the leftover raspberries, almonds, and chocolate glaze as a very tasty garnish:


Mmmmm garnish



Mmmm cake

I think my mom liked it:


Happy Birthday, Mom!