Chocolate genoise with raspberry buttercream

Birthday? Anniversary? We need a cake!

I love making celebration cakes. It’s all about creating a new recipe from tried and tested elements. First I decide on the base cake (it better be sponge! or the ultimate sponge aka genoise!), plain vanilla or chocolate flavoured.

Then I compose the fillings and icings. Buttercreams, ganaches, mascarpone or cream cheese-based frostings, plus the pristine and unbeatable (excuse the pun) whipped cream filling.

Chocolate features often as that’s what my nearest and dearest love. When it’s my birthday cake, I will invariably include fresh fruit because my birthday is in summer.

Chocolate and raspberry, made in heaven

But fruit, especially raspberries, goes well with chocolate too and it breaks the excessive chocolatey sweetness with a hint of a tang.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the combination, featured in this chocolate genoise, for a birthday or a celebration cake. It can be prepared in stages and well in advance, thus making it not too onerously prolonged a task.

The raspberry buttercream can be made a day before, stored in the fridge then brought to room temperature for easy spreading.

The chocolate ganache has to chill before it’s whipped, hence not just convenient but fitting the schedule to make it ahead. Alternatively the genoise can be baked a day in advance and kept in the fridge wrapped in foil or plastic, it will slice all the better if chilled.

My recipe for the genoise is courtesy of The Delectable Hodgepodge. The rest, and the combination – my own.

How to make chocolate genoise

Genoise is the delightful French sponge (even though the name is derived from Italian city of Genoa), light as air, fluffy and weightless but surprisingly workable. It can be sliced into layers, trimmed and shaped after baking. Once you get the hang of it (it involves dropping your cake from a height!), it’s practically failproof.

It’s not quick or simple, but completely worth the effort. If you start with the eggs at room temperature (and you can store eggs outside the fridge anyway), the first step will not take long.

It involves whisking the eggs over a double boiler: the bowl with eggs perched over barely simmering pan of water. Add the sugar little by little, whisking constantly, until the egg mix warms up to about body temperature and you have used up the sugar.

Now it’s time to resort to a mixer at high speed. I expect you can whip the batter by hand but I’m not brave enough to have ever tried. The egg mix needs to be beaten to about five times the original volume, turn very pale and thick, leaving ribbon trails when the beaters are lifted, so a bit of a challenge.

Next the flour with cocoa goes in, best sifted in to prevent clumping, and it should be very delicately folded in with a spatula.

The small amount of butter that you’ve melted and kept warm should now go in: first stirred into a small amount of batter, then folded into the bulk of it.

Drop the cake!

The tin for genoise should be thoroughly buttered and floured, and once the batter is in, give it a sharp rap against the worktop to shift any large air bubbles.

After a half-hour bake, when the sponge surface doesn’t spring back up when pressed with a finger, the best part: drop it! On the floor or the worktop, onto a folded tea towel, from the height of about twenty centimetres.

This, counterintuitively, will stop it from collapsing. Then place the tin upside down on a wooden board and leave for five minutes. And finally, turn it out onto a wire rack, top side up.

When it’s completely cold, cut it in two layers using a cake wire or a very sharp knife.

The genoise base can be baked a day in advance and kept at room temperature.

How to make the raspberry buttercream

This is the easiest, simplest and arguably the nicest buttercream. Butter beaten until fluffy and pale, fresh raspberry puree added by a spoonful, together with icing sugar by a couple of spoonfuls.

Don’t be too generous with the puree lest it curdles the buttercream; also, you want to reserve some to spread over cake layers. At the end whisk in the double cream which will make it fluffier.

How to make chocolate frosting

This again is simple and gorgeous: chocolate ganache, cooled right down, then whipped to a mousse consistency. You can, if you wish, use milk chocolate instead of dark, in which case omit the sugar.

I make ganache by boiling the cream and pouring it over chopped up chocolate. But I know some people do it in reverse, or warm up both ingredients together in a double boiler. Mine is easier I think – and you can boil the cream in the microwave, saving washing up a pan.

When the ganache is cold, whisk it until airy, lighter in colour and thicker in texture; take care not to overwhip.

Assembling the cake

The genoise base should be sliced, the buttercream and chocolate frosting both at room temperature, even if they’d been made ahead and stored in the fridge.

Place the bottom layer on a cake platter and spread some reserved raspberry puree over it, to combat crumbs. Now pile the raspberry buttercream on and spread with a palette knife, unless you adore piping.

Top it with the other cake layer, up whichever side is smoother. And the chocolate frosting by all accounts can be just slathered all over, rustic or nonchalant style, instead of piping rosettes around and on top. But that’s entirely up to you.

More genoise recipes

Dome cake made from the lightest sponge, filled with layers of dark chocolate, raspberry mousse and vanilla buttercream, glazed with white chocolate ganache. The ultimate in ‘wow’ factor.

Genoise sponge cake with mascarpone and blueberry filling. The celebration gateau that is all about class, simplicity and sophistication. No wonder - genoise is after all the classic sponge recipe of the French patisserie.

Victorian Savoy cake, or biscuit de Savoie, is the lightest butterless sponge cake. Fuller taste than angel food, more forgiving than genoise and far more sophisticated than Victoria sponge.

More celebration cake recipes

Silver Palate chocolate cake, a decadent and super moist cake with dark chocolate frosting. NY Times Cooking recipe adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Hungarian flourless hazelnut torte with hazelnut buttercream, a topping of apricot jam and chocolate shavings. A riff on the famous Esterhazy cake, this one is much easier but just as delicious.

Matcha (green tea) sponge cake with lemon and bay leaf scented whipped cream frosting. It’s a beautiful dessert, beautifully simple to make (but nobody will believe you how easy it is).