Chocolate Strawberry Fudge Cake
By: Urvashi Agarwal
Published: Saturday, January 24, 2015 - 11:48am

Ingredients




CAKE
3/4 cup butter, softened (I accidentally used salted, but it still worked fine)
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup almond meal
1 cup self-raising flour (SRF)
1/3 cup dutch processed cocoa powder (darker = richer)
1/4 cup full cream milk
FROSTING
230g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1/4 cup brown sugar (dark brown is better)
1 cup butter, softened and diced
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
EXTRA
400g worth of strawberries, washed, dried, hulled and halved in a clean bowl
Extra 250g punnet to decorate the top with, washed, dried and halved (don’t hull!)
Chocolate sauce (I cheated and bought some from the store)

Preparation

1 Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and line the bottom and sides of one 20cm round cake tin. 2 Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. 3 Beat in eggs, essence and golden syrup till mixed fully through. 4 In a separate bowl, sift the cocoa powder and SRF together. Stir in the almond meal. 5 Alternating with the milk, fold in the dry ingredients into the butter-egg mixture until a smooth batter is formed. 6 Spoon batter into the cake pan (make sure it isn’t too high, though it won’t be if you had my luck!), smooth the top using the back of the spoon and bake for 35-40 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean. 7 Let stand in pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto the wire racks to cool completely. 8 Meanwhile make the frosting: Place all frosting ingredients into a saucepan and melt on low heat till combined and smooth. Stir continuously. Once melted, pour into a bowl and let cool. Refrigerate for an hour, or until spreadable (I whipped mine a bit before using to loosen it). 9 Once cool, split the cake in half carefully. 10 Spread one half’s crumby bottom generously with a layer of frosting. 11 Top with the hulled and halved strawberries generously, overlapping and making sure you fit as many as humanly possible. 12 Add some more frosting on top (not too much) and gently place the other half of the cake on top (crumby side down) 13 Frost the remaining cake’s sides and top and decorate with the non-hulled strawberries and chocolate sauce. 14 Serve at room temperature after 3-4 hours of refrigeration (or eat without refrigerating)

About

A decadent chocolate cake layered with a surprise blanket of strawberries wrapped in fudge. So much good flavour, you will wonder why you didn't try it before!