Description
This chocolate layer cake has a gorgeous kick of bourbon and is layered with a light and refreshing blackberry swiss meringue buttercream.
Ingredients
Scale
For the cake:
- 1 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
- 2 cups of sugar
- 3/4 cups cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 3 tablespoons bourbon
- 1 cup hot coffee
For the buttercream:
- 4 egg whites
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 3/4 pound unsalted butter (3 sticks) softened and cut into pieces
- 1 1/4 cup pureed blackberries
Instructions
For the cake:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease and cover the bottom of 3 9 inch cake pans with wax paper and prepare ingredients.
- Whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.
- In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, vanilla, almond, and bourbon. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry.
- Next, add in the coffee and mix to combine.
- Pour the mixture evenly into the prepared cake pans and bake for 20-30 minutes.
For the buttercream:
- Put eggs whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Whisk until sugar is completely dissolved and mixture reaches 160 degrees.
- Remove bowl from heat and attach the bowl to a mixer, whisk on medium-high speed for 5 minutes or until very stiff peaks form. Lower speed to medium and start adding butter one piece at a time until are all combined. Whisk until stiff peaks form again if you lost definition when adding the butter.
- Switch to the paddle attachment and on low speed slowly add a little bit of the blackberries, keep mixing and adding blackberries until all are combined. Whisk on medium speed to firm up the mixture.
Notes
- For successful swiss meringue buttercream with fresh fruit, make sure your heat-proof bowl is completely dry to start.
- If you don't have a candy thermometer, keep testing the egg and sugar mixture until all the sugar granules have dissolved.
- Whisk until you have very stiff peaks; this is the step when you build up a lot of the structure. Once the berries get added, the buttercream will turn to soup if it's not thoroughly whipped.
- Add the butter and thoroughly whisk until it reaches stiff peaks again.
- Add the blackberry puree. If it starts to et soupy, chill it in the refrigerator for 30 min, and it should stiffen up.
