Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Cake – raspberry cake layers, chocolate ganache, chocolate buttercream, chocolate cake layers and a raspberry cream filling.

Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Cake
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s time for a decadent, chocolate cake! While Ryan and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, I love doing some fun surprises for the kids, and that always includes a treat! (Kids seem to make every holiday a little more magical, don’t you think?)
Our favorite Valentine’s Day treats are chocolate covered strawberries and Sees Candy. Something about those feel fancy and decadent, and who doesn’t love to feel fancy every now and then! With our favorite Valentine’s treats in mind, I made a Strawberry Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake a few years ago. It was like a chocolate dipped strawberry and a strawberry truffle had a baby. It is SO good! It instantly became one of my mom’s favorite cakes. (She actually named it!).

This year, I wanted to revisit the chocolate dipped fruit idea, but with raspberries!
How to Make the Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Cake
As you plan to make this cake, take note of the five different elements, as well as the bake time for the cakes. I recommend splitting this cake up over the course of a few days.
- Day 1: cake layers
- Day 2: filling and buttercream
- Day 3: ganache and decorating
Chocolate Cake
This chocolate cake is a half of my regular dark chocolate cake recipe. You’ll be using one 8-inch round cake pan and baking at 325 for about 30 to 35 minutes. Remember, when you insert a toothpick in the center of your cake, it should come out with a few moist crumbs on it. That’s when you know it’s ready!
Raspberry Cake
The raspberry cake is so flavorful and tender! I think you might characterize it as slightly more dense, but in a good, moist kind of way. Definitely not pound cake like – more tender and moist kind of dense. You’ll be using freeze dried raspberries, in addition to a raspberry compote (which is just raspberries cookies and pureed over the stove). The color is a beautifully natural pink. However, if you find that yours isn’t look as pink as mine, it may be that your freeze dried raspberries weren’t as bright. No worries! Just add a little red or pink food coloring to brighten it up, if you want.
ALSO! Just a heads up, the raspberry cake doesn’t get as tall as the chocolate cake.
Raspberry Cream Filling
You may remember this filling from my Chocolate Raspberry Swiss Roll. It’s incredibly easy to make and incredibly delicious. You will need a food processor or blender for this one. Mixing the ingredients at such a high speed creates a stable whipped filling without any kind of added gelatin. It’s awesome!

Chocolate Buttercream
For the chocolate buttercream, I’m using my go-to recipe you’ve probably seen on here with several cakes. It’s silky, smooth and full of chocolate flavor. When making the buttercream, remember to heat the cream, pour it over the chocolate chips, and then stir to make a ganache – before adding it to the butter and powdered sugar. This ensures you don’t get any chunks of chocolate in your buttercream.
Chocolate Ganache
For the chocolate ganache, we’re using heavy cream and chocolate. Simple as that. We want it to cool to room temp before using in the cake, but then save some for the drip. When you’re ready for the drip, just reheat the ganache to think it out a little.
How to Stack and Decorate This Cake
Now for the stacking and decorating! My favorite part!
Before starting, use a cake leveler or serrated knife to split each cake layer in half. If you’re making your layers ahead of time and freezing them, I like splitting them before I freeze them.
Step 1: Stack and Crumb Coat
Place one of the chocolate cake layers on your cake board. Evenly spread 1 cup of the raspberry cream filling over the chocolate cake with an offset icing spatula. Drizzle and spread about 1/4 cup of the chocolate ganache over the filling. Place one of the raspberry cake layers on top of the ganache. Evenly spread 1 cup chocolate buttercream over the raspberry cake layer. Place your second chocolate cake layer on the chocolate buttercream. Spread another 1 cup of the raspberry buttercream over the cake layer. Spread another 1/4 cup of the ganache on the filling, making sure to leave about an inch around the edge clear of the ganache. Apply a thin layer of buttercream around the entire cake. Scrape off excess buttercream and then freeze the cake for 10-15 minutes.
Step 2: Frost and Decorate
Now it’s time to do our final coat of frosting and decorate the cake.
Tools I like to use for decorating:
- Offset and straight spatulas
- Acrylic disk
- Scrapers
- Drip bottle
- Piping bag
You’ll find them all HERE.
Place the acrylic disk on top of your chilled cake. Get eye level to make sure it looks even. While lightly holding the disk in place, apply buttercream around the disk and then down over the rest of the cake. Use your straight scraper to smooth out the sides. Once you’ve done this, freeze the cake for another 10 minutes and then use a knife to cut off the disk. Apply your chocolate ganache using a drip bottle. Use your offset icing spatula to spread the ganache on top of the cake. With leftover buttercream and raspberry cream, pipe a few dollops on top of the cake using your favorite piping tip (I used the Wilton 6B.
Some fresh raspberries and chocolate shavings also look amazing on this cake.

Don’t you just love how all the colors pop!

Cake Making Tips
Don’t forget to follow my go-to tips for getting your cakes to rise and bake well:
- Preheat your oven for 30 minutes prior to baking.
- Beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy.
- Use good quality pans like Fat Daddio.
- Spray your pans with nonstick spray and line with parchment paper.
- Don’t overmix your cake batter once you add the dry ingredients.
- Use room temperature wet ingredients.
- Use fresh baking powder.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs on it.

Enjoy!
This cake looks divine! I hope I can get a chance to make it one of these days.
I am so so excited to try this cake! I am not a huge chocolate frosting fan (although I still haven’t tried yours) and I’m wondering if I can make the strawberry buttercream from your strawberry dark chocolate truffle cake, make it raspberry and use it on the outside of the cake??
Of course!
When do should the sour cream be added to the raspberry cake?
You fold it in at the end.
This looks so good! Do you think I could use raspberry jam or raspberry emulsion for the filling instead of freeze dried?
Sure!
I don’t understand the step 2 for the chocolate buttercream when you say “ ganache mixture from the buttercream recipe section”… is that part of the chocolate ganache (heavy cream+ chocolate) that goes into the buttercream?. I got confused in that part of the recipe!. Also, do you think this is a beginners recipe or intermediate…? Thank you! It looks delicious!!!!❤️
Yes! and it’s definitely a little more advanced with all the steps!
So you leave the seeds in the raspberry purée? Can’t wait to make this!!
Such a pretty cake!! I love the one side drip. Thank you for all of the amazing cake tutorials and recipes!
Thank you!
I need help! I love the taste of your chocolate cake recipe but for some reason, every time I make it, the batter mixes up really thin and then doesn’t rise much in the oven. I’m at a low altitude so does that affect it? I made sure my baking soda and powder were fresh. Just at a loss! Thanks 🙂
It is a very thin batter and the cakes aren’t huge. You did nothing wrong!
Hello! I’m trying to get ingredients together to make this cake! I haven’t been able to find freeze dried raspberries but found freeze dried strawberries and also bought rasp jam without seeds. Which do you think would work better for a substitution?
They have them at target and amazon!
I didn’t see the instruction for how many cake layers this makes? I’m assuming 2, based on the sliced pictures but the whole cake looks like more? I read carefully and didn’t see any mention of it.
You are making two cakes. One 8-inch raspberry and one 8-inch chocolate cake. You will split those layers in half to become the four layers of cake.
For the raspberry cream, mine came out too soft despite whipping it in the food processor for 2-3 minutes. Any tips on how to get it stiffer? Every element of this recipe tasted AMAZING!
You just need to go longer!