There’s something so simple and pretty about a cake with unadorned sides, in other words, a naked cake. My high altitude naked chocolate raspberry cake features three soft and moist layers of chocolate sour cream cake, filled with raspberry buttercream rosettes. This cake is easy to make and assemble, and sweet enough for any special occasion.
Looking for more high altitude cake recipes? Looking for more high altitude classic cake recipes? Don’t miss my brown butter carrot cake, chocolate fudge cake with ganache, and classic vanilla cake.
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Instructions
Chocolate Cake.
The cake is so easy to make – just sift the dry ingredients, whisk in the liquid ingredients, and bake! The chocolate cake is soft, moist and fluffy, and turns out perfectly every time.
For all of my chocolate cakes and baked goods, I prefer to use either Rodelle or Drost, both unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powders.
Raspberry Buttercream Rosettes.
To make raspberry buttercream, I started with my Perfect American Buttercream recipe, and added seedless raspberry jam. The jam adds a natural raspberry flavor and lovely pink color to the buttercream.
For the rosettes, you’ll need a piping bag and tip 1M. Simply pipe swirls, starting in the middle and swirling outwards, and you’ll have beautiful buttercream rosettes to decorate your naked cake.
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High Altitude Naked Chocolate Raspberry Cake
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Whisk Attachment
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
- ¾ cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 ¼ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 cup whole sour cream
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Buttercream
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- ½ cup seedless raspberry jam
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp meringue powder (optional)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350. Spray the bottoms of three 8-inch round cake pans with non-stick spray.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt, then whisk until completely combined.
- In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, sour cream, oil and vanilla until smooth. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk for about 30 seconds until well combined and mostly free of lumps.
- Divide the batter between the pans. Tap the pans lightly on the counter a few times to pop any large air bubbles. Bake the cakes on the center rack for about 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean or with moist crumbs clinging to it, and the tops spring back when gently touched.
- Set the pans on a cooling rack, cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the butter and jam for one minute until smooth. Scrape the bowl down.
- With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar and meringue powder, mixing to combine. Add the vanilla. Beat on medium high for about 5 minutes, scraping the bowl down occasionally, until very light and fluffy.
- Fit a piping bag with tip 1M, and fill with the buttercream.
- Place a layer of cake on a cake board or cake pedestal. Pipe rosettes onto the cake, then repeat with the 2nd and 3rd layers of cake.
Made this for my niece’s birthday. It was delicious, I need to work on my icing skills though. Thanks!
This cake was delish as well as the icing.. Someone already requested it again for this weekend.