Chocolate Raspberry Cake with Rosehip Glaze

Wild roses grow plentifully in my neck of the woods and in the fall I can find rosehips everywhere. Rosehips have a bit of the tartness of crabapples and are a great source of vitamin C. Tea is a common use for rosehips but I like to make a simple syrup from them. The syrup can be poured over ice cream, used as a sweetener for fresh fruit or in this case, a glaze for a cake.

Chocolate Raspberry Mayo Cake with Rosehip Glaze
Makes two 8” cakes

I like a very moist cake and this cake is very moist. What I like about this recipe is that it is very easy to make. It is one of the first cakes my daughters learned to make. No creaming butter, scraping bowls, or fussy ingredients. A good beginner’s cake!

2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 TBL. instant espresso powder
1 cup sugar
1 cup mayonnaise, I used Best Food mayonnaise, results may be different w/ a different brand
1 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla
A dozen or so fresh (or frozen) whole raspberries
Rosehip glaze*

Pre-heat oven 350◦F
Grease and flour two 8” cake pans. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder and baking soda together into a mixing bowl. Add sugar, mayonnaise, water and vanilla. Mix with a spoon or mixer just until batter comes together. Pour batter into pre-pared pans. Set raspberries around cake, gently pushing them into the batter a bit. Bake 20-30 minutes, until toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean. Let cake sit 5 minutes and then carefully remove cake from pan. Set the cake on a rack to cool. When serving drizzle glaze over cake and add more fresh raspberries.

*Rosehip Glaze
6-8 rosehips, medium size like a large pea and unsprayed
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

In a small sauce pan add all ingredients and bring to a low simmer for 15 minutes. Pull pan off heat and let the syrup sit 15 more minutes, then strain out rosehips and refrigerate syrup until use. The syrup will keep several weeks in the fridge.

Notes
Do not use less sugar in the syrup, if you do you will not have the viscosity you want. Just remember same about of sugar to water.

Image by Annetta Bosakova from the 2013 fall issue of Gatherings Magazine, A Forgers Dinner written by me!!