Chocolate Strawberry Cake

Pin

Starting off this week with a challenge post! I have been going a bit low on cooking, thanks to tight schedules, so thought I need to buck up a bit, so you will see a couple of challenge posts this week apart from my normal posting, InShaAllah… 🙂

After long, I am participating in the Shhh Cooking Challenge this month and my partner is Ramya, who I have already been clubbed along with previously. It was a good experience then, so we decided to repeat the experience this time too! There is a slight change in the format of the challenge – previously, it was just providing ingredients to the partners, however this month onwards, to make it more interesting, a theme would be provided and the participants are supposed to cook up something with the secret ingredients which will be around the theme. Sounds interesting, right? February, being the month of “love” (though I feel that it is just overrated! 🙂 ), the theme decided was, of course without any prizes for guessing, Valentine’s Day. And what did Ramya give me? Something very common for the day – chocolate and she asked me to club it up a fruit of my choice. Isn’t she really sweet? I wasn’t really expecting such an easy way at that!

Pin

Since I had my parents around and it has been a hectic month, I decided to cook up something simple to meet the challenge. That is when my eyes fell on this delicious cake I had baked for Rasha’s madrassa friends during the end of December. Once she had taken some brownies that I had baked and she came back saying that her friends asked for more. And that is when I baked this decadent, rich chocolate cake with gooey strawberry bites in between. Unfortunately, she was not able to give the cake to all her friends and came back with half the cake, which all of us at home wiped out along with a cup of hot coffee.

Strawberries are still available in the market and I guess chocolate is always available 😉 so if you are looking to treat yourself or even better, have an occassion coming, then I would really suggest to bake this cake. Hardly any work going in yet the taste is amazing. I was really apprehensive as to how strawberry would fare in a chocolate cake but I was totally jumping up and down as to how the cake looked, totally decked up with the ganache and tasted so good! Keep it cold and have it the next day, and really it got even more better!

The cake recipe is adapted from here and converted into a chocolate cake. I hope this cake meets up with Ramya was expecting as a post for the theme. If you would like to join in the challenge, then check out here! And if you would want to know what Ramya whipped up with the ingredients I gave her, then hop onto her page!

Pin

Posted on this day:

2013: Malai Chicken Biriyani

Pin

5 from 2 votes

Chocolate Strawberry Cake

Course Cake

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 45 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour

Servings 8

Author Rafeeda

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup 85 gm butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 box 300 gm strawberry, hulled and quartered
• For the ganache:
• 1/3 cup cream
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease and flour an 8 inch pan and set aside.
• Whisk the dry ingredients in a bowl.
• In another bowl, beat the butter and sugar till fluffy. Add the egg and beat. Add the milk and vanilla and beat to combine.
• Slowly add the dry ingedients in batches and fold in till moist.
• Fold in the strawberries.
• Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for around 45 minutes till the skewer comes out clean.
• Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then carefully flip to a cooling rack to cool completely.
• Meanwhile, for the ganache, warm the cream in a microwave for 45 seconds. Add the chocolate chips and stir till smooth.
• Spread the ganache over the cooled cake and allow it to settle. Slice and serve!