Of strawberries and chocolate

Like I said earlier, I have been day dreaming of this blog since so much time... I had written down a recipe that I wanted to share - hope you like it - I did !

I have tried it out on two separate occasions and people have loved it. Here it goes.

Chocolate cake with fresh strawberry filling

You will need:

Chocolate sponge cake ( I bought one from a bakery to avoid the hassle of baking one myself- and with the strong flavour of strawberry and dark chocolate no one will be able to tell the difference. Therefore, I will recommend if you buy one like I did – unless you REALLY are in a mood to bake J)

200 gm dark chocolate broken into small pieces

200 gm full cream

10-12 medium sized strawberries (Some extra strawberries for decorating the cake )

 1 tea spoon sugar

Some water

Cocoa powder

Here is how to make the cake:

Step 1 – The sponge cake

• Cut the sponge cake into two halves and keep aside.
• Make sure that the lower layer is a little thicker than the top layer as the strawberry filling can make the lower layer soggy if it is too thin.

Step 2 – Strawberry filling

• Slice the strawberries. Heat a pan over medium heat and put in the strawberry slices into it.
• Add a tea spoon of sugar into it.
• Now cook it for some time and keep on stirring so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan.
• Continue to cook till it gets a jam kind of consistency. If it gets too thick you can add a tea spoon of water at a time while still on heat to bring to the required texture.
• Once done remove from heat and let it cool.

Step 3 – GANACHE

• Take the dark chocolate in a bowl. Make sure that the chocolate is broken in to small pieces. This is important so that the final ganache we end up with is not lumpy and is smooth and silky in texture.
• Heat the cream in a pan till it just comes to a boil. Take off the heat once it boils and pour over the chocolate pieces.
• Let it stand for five minutes. Then mix with a wooden spatula gently till all the chocolate melts and the cream is well combined.
• This is the ganache. Keep it aside.

Step 4 – putting it together

• Take the lower layer of the sponge on a drip stand and spread the strawberry mixture on top of it.Place the second layer on top.Press a little (but very gently) so that the layers are in place and don’t slide.
• Pour the ganache on top of the cake in the centre, till the cake is covered form all the sides.
• Let the cake rest for some time till the excess ganache pours off the sides of the cake and begins to set.
• At this stage, you can decorate the cake with strawberries and dust it with cocoa powder

 Cool in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Let me know how you like it.