Pinspired: Chocolate Rose Cake

Valentine's Day is pretty much the official holiday of chocolate, right? I saw some cakes like this on Pinterest and have been dying to try one. My sister-in-law's birthday is in January so that was the perfect opportunity. It was really easy and I like that it looks a little nicer than your typical homemade frosted cake. 

This cake was actually a multi-step experiment. First I wanted to try out something different for the filling in the middle. At this point all I had was vanilla frosting, so I added some cocoa powder because I wanted everything in this cake to be chocolatey. 

Then I grabbed a bag of frozen raspberries from the freezer and crushed them up while they were still frozen, until they were just little berry segments. Then I mixed that into the frosting and quickly frosted the middle before they could thaw. Since they were frozen they didn't make the frosting runny or turn it all red.

Then I put the whole cake in the freezer until I was ready to frost the outside.

I forgot to take a picture, but I did frost a thin layer around the side of the cake first, to smooth it out and make sure the filling wouldn't show. Then I took a can of dark chocolate frosting and a can of vanilla. I divided the vanilla into two bowls and added a little of the dark chocolate frosting to one and a little more to the other. This gave me the three gradients of the chocolate.

I started at the bottom with the dark chocolate frosting and just made circles all the way around using the star tip. I have this cake decorating set, and filling it up each time was just barely enough to make it all the way around. So every time I filled it up I used the next color.  This method is pretty forgiving so it's really great for people with a less than steady hand when it comes to frosting (yours truly). I took the cake out of the freezer for a couple of hours before we served it so the raspberries in the filling had time to thaw. I think they gave it a great flavor. I'm always a sucker for chocolate raspberry anything though.

I think this would make a pretty and decadent chocolate cake for Valentine's day. Do you have a favorite chocolate treat for Valentine's day?

Thanks for reading.

-Haley