Chocolate Raspberry Fortress Cake

It's basically just chocolate

It's a fortress because of its height: layers of cake, raspberries and chocolate ganache icing with an extra layer of fool for fun. It would have been two layers higher had it not been for the fact I had to transport it to my friend's for her birthday! The cake itself is a brownie-sponge cross. I used techniques and measurements from both types of bake to come up with a very chocolatey, rich sponge. A reason for this is that I'm usually a little disappointed with chocolate cakes as they never really deliver a chocolate hit, and I find that melting chocolate with butter usually does the trick. Coffee also makes it even more chocolatey!  I made the cake in 3 tins and sliced them open.

not the prettiest, but pretty tasty

Ingredients:
240g butter
200g 74/70% chocolate
1 tsp of instant coffee made up with 2tblsp hot water
1 tsp vanilla
200g caster sugar
4 eggs
40g soft dark brown sugar
240g self raising flour
1 tsp baking  powder
20g cocoa


icing:
150g raspberries 
300 ml double cream
200g icing sugar
150g dark chocolate


Method:
-preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and grease and line 3 8" round cake tins.
- bring a few inches of water to boil in a pan. Chop up the butter and chocolate and place in a heat proof bowl. Add in the coffee and vanilla. Once boiling, place the heat proof bowl over the top and turn off the heat.
- beat the eggs and the sugar together until light and doubled in size.
-sift together all the dry ingredients. 
- give the chocolate mixture a stir- if it hasn't melted, bring the water back to the boil, then turn off the heat. Once the mix has melted and cooled, slowly pour the chocolate in to the eggs and sugar whilst beating. Once thoroughly combined, sift the dry ingredients over the top and gently fold in using a large metal spoon. Do this until just combined. Pour equal quantities in to the tins, level out and bake for 20-25 mins, switching the tins around after 15 mins. 
-when baked, remove from the tins and leave to cool on a wire rack.


- melt the chocolate for the icing over a bowl of hot water. Add in the cream and mix together. Leave to cool. Sift in enough icing sugar to thicken so that it will hold the cakes together.


-slice the cake in half horizontally and spread some icing on the one of tops. Put some raspberries on and add another cake. Continue until you get to the last cake ( the recipe will make 6 layers, I only did four for the actual cake. It was lucky as one broke, so I had a spare. The other one is in the freezer for cake emergencies!). Spread the remaining icing on top and then decorate with some more raspberries.
I had some raspberry fool left over from this recipe so used it as one of the layers. Next time I make the cake I think that I would just make a load of fool and use it instead of the ganache, as the sharpness was excellent against the dense cake.