Malted Chocolate Raspberry Cake

Incredible chocolate devil’s food cake recipe layered with malted milk chocolate raspberry whipped ganache frosting. Finished with chocolate drizzles and fresh raspberries. Powdered sugar, because why not?

I’m not even sure where to start with this one. Devil’s food cake? Raspberry ganache? I mean… malted raspberry chocolate ganache?! Come on, y’all. How could you not want to make this? — I know that most of you have either had a malted shake or have at least heard of them. At least, I hope so. If you haven’t, you are missing out on one of life’s greatest gifts.

What is malt anyway? During Prohibition, many of the breweries needed to find a way to keep the lights on and started to produce malt extracts that were used in many sodas, shake, and illegal home microbrews that kept everyone… warm until the appeal in 1933. Malt powder became popular in milkshakes after a Walgreens in Chicago added it to a chocolate treat, resulting in rave reviews. The powder (available on Amazon) was, and still is, a combination of barley malt, wheat, powdered milk, and salt. It adds a delicious depth that is unmistakable in a dessert.

Many of my recipes on the blog start from exploring cookbooks. I wouldn’t be completely truthful with saying that I just enjoy cookbooks considering the number that I’ve collected over the years. It’s fascinating to look through aged books for ideas and bases for creating something new in my own kitchen. From time to time, new cookbooks will also elicit this same excitement.

The Artful Baker is a book by Cenk Sonmezsoy of the blog Cafe Fernando. I connected with this book in so many ways. Being a total nerd in and out of the kitchen, this obsessively thorough approach to baking completely speaks to me. Baking doesn’t have to be an exact science, but if you enjoy that type of thing it can certainly be as detailed as you’d like it to be in attempt to perfect the art. The recipes in this book are beautifully created with such a sense of detail that I knew that I had to try them myself immediately.

The cover photo for the book is of a chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache frosting. Chocolate shards create this Devil Wears Chocolate masterpiece. It’s rich and a great base to play with for creating your own twist. — After making the original recipe a couple of times, I decided to use the recipe as a base for a version with malted chocolate and raspberry additions.

The cake is a chocolate cake that uses boiling hot water. This sounds odd if you’ve never composed a cake using hot water, but works wonderfully with chocolate recipes that utilize cocoa in powder form by dissolving and incorporating it incredibly well. The cakes are baked until the structure is light and the finished base is very moist (apologies for this that hate the word… it just works for cakes).

The ganache is where I chose to incorporate the malt powder. Whipped ganache is a great frosting for chocolate cakes, I think. With chocolate, the warmth of the flavor can sometimes translate into it feeling less light than other flavors. Whipping ganache will aerate and add great contrast in texture and lightness to balance these cake layers. I’ve added freeze-dried raspberries into the ganache as well for a bit of tartness that I think pairs well with the toasty flavor of the malt powder and richness of the chocolate bomb.

All in all, this cake is a serious treat with an old school twist.