This buttery, dense, dark chocolate cake is nothing less than spectacular, if I do say so myself! I have been tinkering with the recipe for over 9 weeks, and I am really happy with the final result. Here are the highlights of the past two months creating this little darling…

Sorry Hershey’s, Barry’s got you beat. In my (un)official taste opinion, Barry Callebaut makes the best cocoa. I tried a few of the brands I could get at my local grocer, but the chocolate flavor seemed to disappear behind the other flavors. I did some research and purchased some Callebaut Cocoa (22-24%) and Boy! what a treat! It has an intense chocolate flavor that didn’t get lost in the rum and raspberry liqueur. This stuff is beautiful, really.

Butter. To salt or unsalt. I grew up on “lightly salted butter,” so after I read a while back that salt is a preservative in butter, and that you might be eating salted butter made many months ago, I made the transition to unsalted. I’m a firm believer that salt brings out the flavors in foods, so I add an extra pinch of salt to my chocolate batter. Just a pinch. And lots of butter. Gotta have lots of butter.

From Amsterdam to Cuba in search of the best raspberry liqueur. This was fun. Soon after I decided I was going to make a chocolate raspberry liqueur cake I headed to the liquor store. (They love to see me coming.) I picked up several raspberry rums, raspberry vodkas, and raspberry liqueurs. BF and I lined up our shot glasses and started sipping. Bicardi Razz and Bols Raspberry were the “sipping” winners. They each had a nice, fresh raspberry taste. Not that artificial-flavor flavor. After adding each to my cake batter, the Bicardi got lost. Never to be found again. The Bols, however, stood proudly next to the dark cocoa and rum and tasted wonderful.

With my cake recipe underway, I moved on to the glaze. Every Babycakes needs it’s own glaze. My Rum Babycake gets a nice little soak in a hot buttered rum so, not to be outdone, Cocoa Framboise got it’s own glaze of butter, rum, and more raspberry liqueur.

And a sugary crown to top it off. Who knew there were so many types of sugar!?! Granulated, fruit (finer than granulated), bakers special sugar (finer than fruit sugar and used by Carmen’s Babycakes), bar sugar (finer than bakers special), confectioners (did you know you can make your own with granulated sugar and a little cornstarch?), course sugar, sanding sugar, turbinado, pure cane, beet juice sugar, demerara, and the list goes on! After some trial and error, I decided on a coarse sanding sugar. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Did I mention it was perfect?

So there you have it. My two month adventure creating the “perfect” chocolate cake.

A heartfelt thanks to Nita for nudging me in the direction of something chocolatey, and to BJ for recommending the winning combination of chocolate and raspberry liqueur.