Rasberry Chocolate Chinese New Year Cake

Recently, The Lovely Wife and I were invited over to a good friends house for dinner on the second day of Chinese New Year - February 15th 2010. Ms Lor Siak Por had also just moved into a new apartment and so this was kind of a double celebration.

I had offered to make a cake and initially I had planned on making my version of the Le Kit Cat but a quick check with her showed that there may be some problem with space in her fridge. I also didn't know how many people she would be inviting so I thought I would make a cake that didn't need refrigeration.


Deciding on what cake to make was a bit of a challenge. Ms LSP had indicated that she wanted a red cake - in line with the Chinese New Year festivities and also the fact that Red is considered good fortune. The only red cake that I know of is the Red Velvet Cake but I'm not a big fan of that due to the amount of colouring that goes into the cake. I considered making a normal butter cake and topping it off with red icing when I remembered that I had once made a cake using Jelly crystals (but never posted about)that my friend Naomi had told me about.

The fact that Ms LSP also likes fruity, summery flavours convinced me further that this was a good idea. So I made a Raspberry Chocolate Cake! I sandwiched the cake with chocolate icing and also piped on the Chinese Characters for Luck in dark chocolate.



For a bit of added flavour, I tossed in some strawberry jam in the chocolate icing as well!

The beauty of this cake was that everyone thought I used real raspberries for the cake. The cake had a lovely reddish tinge (okay, maybe more pinkish) with a nice subtle taste of raspberries. The strawberry jam laced chocolate icing complemented the cake very nicely.

How to make a Jelly Cake? Just use your favourite Butter Cake recipe - plain of course.
The trick to this cake is to just substitute an equal amount of sugar with jelly crystals. If your cake uses 200g of sugar and your jelly crystals are 90g, then use the 90g of jelly and 110g of sugar. Get it? Very easy, very tasty and everyone will wonder where you got the flavours from!

The cake was very well received and everyone really enjoyed it. The only trouble with this cake is that it gets a little dry after some time - especially if left uncovered. It does have a nice crumb though.



Ms LSP was really thrilled with the cake and the next day she sent me the photo above to post on this blog...

I'm glad you liked the cake Ms LSP!