freycinet

Despite living in Tasmania for many years, I only just made my first trip out to Freycinet earlier this month. And wow, it was absolutely stunning! I've tried to capture the untouched beauty of gorgeous Wineglass Bay and Hazards Beach through these photos, and also hopefully prove to my lovely Brisbane friends that Tasmania isn’t just all about two-headed, six-fingered people =P 

chocolate and raspberry layered cake with macarons

After many, many long months, I finally managed to find some time to blog again! =)

So last month, I made this cake for my housemate’s birthday – a devil’s food cake layered with raspberry and white chocolate ganache, coated in dark chocolate ganache and topped with fresh raspberries and vanilla macarons filled with raspberry and white chocolate ganache – and it was absolutely delicious! And yes, whilst a little time consuming it was well worth seeing it demolished in just over a day.

The cake itself is beautifully moist and scrumptious, so much so it’s definitely going to become my staple chocolate cake recipe from now onwards. Both the ganaches were easy enough to make, and you can most definitely change the quantity of raspberry puree in the white chocolate and raspberry ganache to suit your taste preference. Spreading the dark chocolate ganache on the outside of the cake proved to be very annoying as always – I still haven’t mastered the skills to do it very well!

For the macarons, I used a beginners macaron recipe considering the epic fail that was my first batch of macarons from a couple of years ago (I’ve been intentionally avoiding making macarons ever since). But my second attempt, thankfully, was much better! If you’re not overly keen to try your hand at the macarons, you can always buy them from a store, or simply top the cake with raspberries alone which still looks amazing.

Find the recipe for the cake here, and for macaron beginners I’d recommend using this macaron recipe.