White Chocolate and Raspberry Cake

It was one of my brother's birthday about a month ago. We didn't actually have any plan to celebrate it as his wife took him to a weekend getaway to Napa for his birthday.

The week after, the wife had a last-minute plan to have a gathering with LOTS of cajun-style shrimp among friends (there is this one place that we wanted to try) and a surprise celebration for my brother's birthday, which means that there had to be a cake. It was only two days before the gathering so I didn't have much time to make any fancy cake, not even to think about what cake to make.

After looking at what I had in my fridge, I decided to make this white chocolate and raspberry cake. This was one of a more complicated cakes I make during my early baking time and it was popular back then. I had some cream cheese left from the cheesecake, and I still have quite a bit of homemade raspberry jam that I made for the wedding cake.

Normally, I make the raspberry jelly using raspberry puree and gelatin, but I decided to use up the raspberry jam that I thinned out with a little bit of water so that I can pipe it.

It seems like my decorating skill has improved if you compare it to this and this, and this this, don't you think? at least in my humble opinion :). It was quite fast to make it too, even decorating it. Since I didn't have a square cake ring that's tall enough, I didn't use any mold to assemble this, which makes it difficult to make the top layer super smooth. So I decided to make a pattern just by using spatula, and I think it turned out quite well. This cake is light and perfect for summery weather like this.

The shrimp was delicious! I think we have a new favorite because it is much closer to where we live. It was the kind of dinner where we used all of our ten fingers to eat, cajun style! and I think there was some martini and tequila involved too :). At the end, I think people left with a happy and full stomach :)